Shark attack survivor, Cameron Wrathall, 57, shares his story:
“Beaut day,” my friend Richard said, as we made our way to the Bicton jetty.
I’ve been a swimmer all my life, and for 35 years I’d played water polo, too.
When it worked out that I would raise my girls, Cian, 26, and Keely, 24, on my own, I got a job at a water polo club which I could do around school hours.
Read more: I saved a puppy from shark-infested waters!
The pool bordered the Swan River, and during the summer, I swam in the Swan every day.
It cleared my mind.
“Off we go,” I said, as Richard and I jumped off the jetty.
On this particular day, January 14, 2021, it was just before 8am and we’d decided on one of our shorter routes.
We swam around 800m before stopping near a cabin cruiser moored about 100m from the shore.
As we chatted, Richard clung to the boat and I treaded water.
Just then, I felt something bump into me from below and behind.
The impact was so strong, it knocked me over onto my side.
Feeling a strange pressure on my left leg and buttock, I looked down. To my horror, I saw a 3m bull shark had bitten into my thigh and was twisting me!
Shaking me side to side, it was like it was trying to tear part of me away.
I didn’t have time to scream.
I have to get this off before it kills me! I thought.
With the heels of both hands, I struck the top of the shark’s head.
It let go straight away and swam off. The water around me went bright red.
“Shark!” I finally managed.
“Yes I know,” Richard replied, his eyes wide. He’d seen the shark’s tail break the surface a second before it bit me.
It all happened so quickly he hadn’t had time to scream either.
“I have to get to shore before I drown,” I said.
As I kicked, I could feel the water running through the cavity the shark bite had created.
Weirdly, I felt no pain.
Reaching the river bank, I inspected the wound.
It was horrible — it looked like a side of beef with all the flesh hanging off the bone.
Richard pulled me further up onto the shore.
“Help!” he screamed. “Shark!”
Two kayakers and a paddleboarder heard his cries and raced towards us.
We could see the trail of blood I’d made swimming to the shore, and then a big cloud of red where the attack had happened, like an oil slick.
One of the kayakers pulled his shirt off and made a tourniquet around my injured leg.
“We need to get him up onto the road,” one of the blokes said.
But the river bank didn’t have a clear path through the shrubs and it was a steep climb up to the road.
So they put me onto the paddleboard and dragged me along the shallows until they got to an easier section to navigate.
Meanwhile, a man who lived in a house that backed onto the river had been outside having his coffee. Seeing what happened, he called triple 0.
By now, I’d lost so much blood I was falling in and out of consciousness.
All I wanted to do was sleep.
There was still no pain and I felt oddly peaceful.
“Stay with us!” one of the men shouted in my face.
Ten minutes later, the ambulance and a trauma team arrived and whisked me off to hospital where I was put into an induced coma.
Three days later, I woke up breathing like Darth Vader with my oxygen mask, my daughters by my side.
“I am your father,” I joked in my Darth Vader voice.
“Oh Dad,” Keely said, jumping up and grabbing my hand.
“We thought we were going to lose you,” Cian said.
Miraculously, the shark’s bite had just missed my femoral artery.
Still, I learned my heart had stopped in the ambulance and I’d suffered a broken hip.
The head of my femur had been split in half and muscles and tendon had been ripped off the bone and had to be stitched back together while I was under.
My sciatic nerve was also severed in two places.
Days later, the two kayakers, Kieran and Peter, and the paddleboarder, Vance, came to see me.
“Thank you for saving my life,” I said to them.
After five weeks in hospital, I spent another five weeks in rehab.
At first, I had to use a wheelchair to get around, then crutches, and now I get by with a foot brace and one crutch.
I have no feeling in my left foot because of nerve damage.
I’ve since had to change jobs.
I’m now an advocate for safe swimming and am hoping to become a motivational speaker, focusing on resilience and overcoming trauma.
A year on, I did go swimming in the Swan River again.
I was worried I’d be hyper-vigilant but as I took my first strokes, all my fears disappeared.
The water grounds me and is still my happy place.
Mine was the first attack in the Swan River since 1968, but sadly a girl died from a shark attack a year after mine.
Richard was so traumatised he has only recently been able to get back into the water again.
I’ve become good friends with the blokes who saved me, and every year Richard and I meet up with them for dinner around our “sharkaversary”.
I don’t blame the shark, but I do feel incredibly lucky to be alive.
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