My one-year old granddaughter (let’s call her Posey) loves a snack. She calls it a ‘nak’ which is cute as hell coming from a knee-high cutie-pie with pigtails and a winning smile. Not so cute coming from a two-tonne six-metre Great White whose winning-smile is made up of three-hundred razor-sharp teeth, and which has decided you are the ‘nak’.
Oops we did it again.
The Australian Shark Attack Incident database updates daily in Oz and added another ‘nak’ yesterday — a 63-year old man from Perth taken fifteen metres from the shore, and whose remains are yet to be found. I guess we’re waiting for Jaws to burp. This follows a bumper 2025 season where there were 25 attacks incidents including five fatalities really-serious incidents. 2026 is only nine-months young and we’re already on track to smash the record with five really-serious incidents and summer barely on the horizon.
But you know what they say: “Come on in, the waters boiling!”
I write about shark incidents fairly often because Australians get eaten fairly often. Four people have been unalived by bears in the US in 2026 so far. Nobody dies from wild animal attacks in Europe because there are no wild animals left. Nobody knows how many snakebite and tiger-related unalivings there have been in India nor how many lives were extinguished by elephants or hippos in Africa, because nobody cares about brown and black people, otherwise we’d know the numbers.
QED, as my annoying mathematics teacher used to say.
In my post ‘how not to get eaten by a shark‘ (Nov 2021) I made the observation that we don’t always close beaches after a shark attack, we mostly just erect signs — ‘enter water at own risk’ — knowing grommets will be back in the water carving it up the next day. In my post ‘welcome to shark central‘ (Jan 2026) I ran the numbers again and rang the bell: “There have been exactly zero shark-related incidents on dry land!” I said. “Don’t go in the water!” I said.
Result? Five humans reduced to burley, and sixty-six (66) incidents so far.
But sure, ignore me.
In five weeks we embark on our annual pilgrimage to Noosa, and while a knee-deep splash down Main Beach is guaranteed, the only place my detestables will get a good soak is in the resort pool or the spa in our room. I have checked, and nobody to date has ever been savagely de-legged while sipping a mango daiquiri at the swim-up bar.
Or espresso martini.
Forget white privilege, it’s actually about walking the talk.
I mean, imagine my embarrassment if I fell out of a kayak into a bull shark and returned to Sydney minus an arm or a leg? I’d never live it down. ‘”Don’t go in the water” he said!’ you’d chortle, swigging your cask wine. so the answer is not to get into the kayak in the first place. Yes that’s a metaphor for life, but also for survival in Australia, a.k.a. shark central.
No yak, no nak.