Young and Brave ( or foolish)

[rayke1938]

When you get on a bit you tend to reminiss. Here is an extract from am email from one of my mates who used to be a mad keen spearo.

My father-in-law (Jim) and I were shooting fish at the \"Julian Rocks\" at Byron Bay many years ago. These rocks are actually shown on the Admiralty charts as Juan and Julia Rocks. The visibility was lousy and it was touch and go whether I went in or not. I remind you that Byron Bay had a whaling station a long time before this event and it was said that Great White sharks were wont to revisit this site per instinct. I think there was also a meat works there when this happened too and they would dump their waste into the water, thereby creating a \"blood line\" that sharks were said to \"follow up\". There were also several Grey Nurse sharks (now protected) around the Rocks and which the local scuba blokes fed.

Anyway, I used to carry the spear gun and an old bent up spear, suspended on a buoy behind me and as I'd shoot a fish, I'd take it off the spear from the gun and put it on the old buggared one. I had about 30 ft. of cord from me to the buoy. Jim used a different technique: he used a hand spear and would stuff the fish he'd shot in a sugar bag that he'd slip under his weight belt.

On this particular day, the vis. was so poor, I couldn't see the bent spear even though I'd racked up several fish on it. I felt this terrific wrench on the cord in my hand and that was the last I saw of the buoy, the old spear, the fish and some cord. I saw nothing else. At that time I tried to take an old mate's (Doug Collum) advice, to wit, get out of the water and walk calmly back to the boat. This didn't work, but I still made it back to the boat in record time. Jim was in the boat when I got there and was later to remark that he thought I was acting a trifle strange when I turned up and threw the weight belt and gun into the boat in advance of using the outboard cavitation plate to leap into the boat.

I told him what had happened and, as we removed wet suits etc., we had our feet up on the seats rather than the deck, and knees up around our chins. We upped anchor and buggared off lickety split. I'll never know if it was a massive Nurse that I'd sighted on previous trips to the same area or something more sinister. There's never been a proven attack on humans by Nurses (the shark type) in Australian waters but several of attacks by Whalers and Whites.

So there. Beware Carcharodon Megalodon!

Footnote for Doug, Darb, Bruce the Piper, Sterling and Mick. Jim currently resides at an aged care facility at Birkdale. Doug, I've still got the scar on my right leg from the one that bit me at Malabar many, many years ago. You did most of the driving back to Brisbane in the EH -

The scar on his leg was from when he impaled his leg on an open rollock ( yes he used to row out)and ended up suspended over the side of the boat whilst diving the malabar murk off sydney. Luckily his mate was able to lift him and the rollock back into the boat and then row back to shore with only one oar. ( the rollock had to be removed from his leg in hospital)

Ray

[faulked]

sounds like tough old bastards ive heard enough stories from spearfishers to never try it when i was up north i met a feller who had a scar on his leg that looked like a tiger had chewed on his leg then spat him back out i asked he said he shot the biggest spaniard hed ever seen which pissed of the mackeral which turned around bit his leg and swam off nasty nasty

[fishsurfdive]

julian rocks is a awsome place I lived near there, in Ballina during uni. My misses was a dive instructor at the rocks, she had dived there weekly for years. As such I could score free trips out on the dive boats, amazing array of sea life. One day i decided to freedive and saw everything from big kings, massive GT's, bar cod, tuna, turtles, so many little fish, ect ect. Went fishing there once in a little inflatable cleaned up, caughts kings, bream, trevs

Anyway, as per sharks at the rocks there are lots of whalers,harmless grey nurse and leopard sharks, sometimes tigers. There was a fatal shark attack there years ago. Nicole's boss was on the boat and the story went

\" group of divers decended not at julain rocks but a site just further north, the visibility was bad and as the group dived they noticed a large shark, couldn't see it that well and presumed it was a harmless grey nurse shark. the group did there dive and went to surface. There was a bloke at the bottom of the mooring line doing a 2 minute decompression stop. When he became low on air his dive computer went off, beep beep beep, a massive great white came in and bit him in half. It took the top of his torso, cut him off at the waste. All the people in the boat could do was salvage his legs. They buried his remains and a week later the shark turned up dead further north at brunswick heads, dive tanks and all in its belly. Divers also later found the dudes head, how bad is that. They decided to put it back into the ocean\"

grousim story, a good reminder that natures beasts are truly the kings of the ocean