God,I think,they’re everywhere.
Horror as woman is decapitated in great white shark attack
The Daily
January 17, 2024
by Chris Cooper
Human remains have been found at a Kangaroo Bay beach on the East Coast of Victoria. The horrifying attack occurred at about 9p.m.(AEST) on Monday around 400 meters from shore. The attack was witnessed by two local fishing charters and a handful of tourists.
Tourist Alan Wright said, “I saw a massive great white just chomping on this woman’s body. A moment later, the body was in half.”
Human body parts were left floating in the water. The remains have not been formally identified, but police have taken them to the Victorian morgue for forensic examination.
It is the second fatal attack in Kangaroo Bay in twenty-five years. In 1998, Bendigo resident Hannah Striker’s car was found abandoned at beach number 4. It’s believed the twenty-four-year-old was taken by a great white shark while swimming. Parts of her wet suit were recovered.
There have been an increasing number of shark sightings in Kangaroo Bay in the last three years. Police are telling people to exercise caution when swimming.
Kangaroo Bay locals have declined to comment.
Chapter 6
We hate the tourists. We hate everything that isn’t us. We protect our own, until we don’t.
But when that sun descends, the town is ours again. I watch sunburned parents shaking out towels, lugging a cooler with one hand, an exhausted toddler with the other. They leave empty bottles of soft drink and brightly colored buckets discarded in the sand. It’s like they think the day is over. Truth is, it’s only just begun.
They might own the day, but we own the night.
Colleen Holloway, a long-term resident with wiry hair tied in a severe ponytail, marches up and down beach 2, pointedly picking up rubbish as the tourists step around her, avoiding her eyes. She’s a short woman, five feet at most, but there’s a toughness about her, and she’s built like a firecracker, compact and coiled. She had a soft spot for the women in this town, especially my mum. Colleen’s son, Travis, was my childhood best friend. After school, Mum and I would sometimes walk to Colleen’s. Trav and I chased grasshoppers in the backyard while Mum sat at the kitchen table, crying.
I remember Colleen’s arm slung around Mum’s shoulders, not gently, but tight. A grip that said,It’s okay, I won’t let go.But what I remember most is that they barely spoke at all. Now I know why. Sometimes there’s nothing women can say to each other except, “Leave him before he kills you.”
And leave him, Mum finally did. I just wish she’d taken us with her.
But Colleen stayed to fight it out. Growing up, I felt the steadiness of her presence in the background. Like a hand just barely touching my back, making sure I didn’t fall.
I sit on the sand, my knees up to my chest, cap pulled low overmy head. Jessie is beside me, happily watching all the comings and goings, coat warm from the sun. She can’t stop wagging her tail at the seagulls. She’s not quite sure what to do with all this blessed freedom. Me either, I suppose.
“This yours?” Colleen spits out, thrusting a beer can at a teenage tourist reeking of cigarettes.
He ignores her, stomps off, towel slung over his shoulder. She glares at him like she wishes she could throw the can at his head. I smile into my knee, remembering Joy and my thrilling outburst.
Colleen charges over to me, dragging her bin bag as the sun drops fast behind her. I get to my feet, looking over my shoulder to the sand dunes, scanning them for any sign of my brother. She squints at me and the realization hits. Her features soften, and her grip on the garbage bag loosens. “Minnow.”
I smile. “Hey.”
I stuff my hands into my pockets as Heath strides down the sand dunes, a white fishing bucket hanging loose from his fingers.
“Good to have you back, Min,” Colleen says simply. But I swear her eyes moisten. She quickly turns her face away as if she’s glancing over her shoulder, but I notice how she bends her face into it. I’ve always felt that Colleen wished she could have done more for Heath and me. That she carries some guilt about the mess of the past. But I don’t feel that way. Her background presence was comforting enough, and I knew I could walk to her house and watch cartoons with Trav whenever I wanted. I was always welcome there. That was enough.
But after the incident with Trav…after he was sent away, I stopped going around to her place. Truth is, I felt guilty about what happened with her son. Responsible for it.
We say nothing, and the silence swallows us up. It’s my brother who breaks it, arriving at my side, shoulders stiff, as if he can feel the tension.
“Hey!” someone yells out. Luke waves at us from a yellow-and-white-striped beach towel. A toddler sits opposite him wearing only a nappy, clutching fistfuls of sand, her eyes narrowed in concentration. Luke lumbers over, leaving the child by herself on thetowel. He stands in front of me, lips twitching, hands on his skinny hips. Colleen eyes him warily.
I nod at the kid. “She yours?”
