WA:Shark victim had a close call in Qld

AAP General News (Australia)
08-18-2010
WA:Shark victim had a close call in Qld

PERTH, Aug 18 AAP - The mother of shark victim Nicholas Edwards says he had a close
call with a shark on the Gold Coast a few years ago and she had urged him never to surf
again.

The 31-year-old father of two was on his surfboard on Tuesday morning at South Point
near Gracetown, about 270km south of Perth, when he was attacked by a shark.

Despite desperate efforts by fellow surfers and ambulance officers to keep him alive,
he died after suffering a severe bite to his right leg.

Police said Mr Edwards, from Busselton about 50km from Gracetown, was trying to get
in one last surf before returning to his job as a miner in the WA Goldfields.

On Wednesday his mother, Leona Lindner, said that when her son lived on the Gold Coast
he came in from a surf very quickly one day after a close call with a shark.

"I warned him all the time," Mrs Lindner told Fairfax Radio in Perth.

"I said, 'Don't go in Nick, never again', but he said, 'Mum I love surfing and if I
am going to die then I will die doing something I love'.

"I have to tell you, between his mining and surfing we wondered when a phone call like
this would come."

Mrs Lindner said her son loved life and surfing and that's why he had chosen to live
at Busselton, in the renowned surfing region around Margaret River.

Mr Edwards, who with his wife and two children, aged two and seven, only recently moved
to Busselton, was a fly-in fly-out mine worker in the northern WA Goldfields mining centre
of Leinster.

Mrs Lindner, from Glengowrie in South Australia, said the family was numbed by her son's death.

Fellow surfers worked to revive him and applied a makeshift tourniquet to his leg after
he made it to rocks following the attack.

Ambulance officers applied CPR on the way to Margaret River Hospital but he was pronounced
dead on arrival.

Beaches in the area remained closed on Wednesday morning.

Department of Fisheries WA regional manager Phil Shaw said a plane would overfly the
area with fisheries officers on Wednesday morning to watch out for sharks.

An assessment would be made if a risk to people still remained and local authorities
would be advised in relation to ongoing beach closures, he said.

But Mr Shaw said there was a good chance the shark that attacked Mr Edwards had moved on.

He said the department had no information as to what type of shark attacked Mr Edwards.

"We may never know," he said.

Great white sharks are common off that part of the WA coast and are a protected species
but can be killed if it's deemed they pose a threat.

In 2004, local surfer Brad Smith died after a shark attack at Gracetown's Lefthanders Beach.

Gracetown also witnessed tragedy in 1996 when five adults and four children were killed
in a cliff collapse near the town while watching a surfing carnival.

AAP ldj/was

KEYWORD: SHARK (FILE PIX AVAILABLE)

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