Why are we so entranced by the image of the shark, the great white predator of the deep? Maybe because he's such a perfect metaphor for fear and a destiny we cannot control.

Dheera Sujan - In the Shark's Domain

The year 2001 saw a media feeding frenzy on shark attacks. Newspapers and magazines ran horror stories of boys who hung palely between life and death while their newly stitched-on arm slowly healed; or honeymooners whose future together was changed by a casual swim on a beach that led to blood, airlifts and amputations. Sometimes at the bottom of the story, there's a line about sharks not being natural predators of humans, and how the chances of being attacked by a shark are dwarfed by death on the roads, in the air or even by bee stings.

Smashing Innocence
In the 1960's when the rest of the world was just beginning to lose its innocence, there were some places that firmly held on to theirs. Perth, the capital of Western Australia was one such place. Still the most isolated city in the world, sandwiched between infinite sea and infinite desert, in the 60's Perth was what author Robert Drewe calls a town where the sand people lived. The bleached white sand dunes and a beach-oriented lifestyle are what he remembers most about the time and the place of his childhood. It was the kind of place where people left their keys in the car ignition, and the back doors of their homes open to let in the cool evening breezes.

That innocence was smashed when people suddenly started being murdered. A babysitter with a bullet hole in her head as she bent over her homework in the living room; a student shot in his sleep out on the back porch; a woman run over and over by a car with a deliberately homicidal driver. There were eight different modus operandi so the police looked for eight different killers.

Robert Drewe has written a book about the serial killer of Perth, Eric Cooke who was finally caught in 1964. "The strange thing about Eric Cooke's victims," he says, "is that there were others who he tried to kill, but who for some reason, escaped, so there are about 20 people walking around Perth today, who are lucky to be alive."

Close Escape
Brian Sierakowski was at Perth’s most popular beach, Cottesloe, surf skiing with a friend. Suddenly he felt a great wave push them both out into the water and saw his slender fibreglass ski in the mouth of a four metre white pointer. “I was in the water right near him,” he remembers. “And this creature looked me right in the eyes as he drove his jaws in the ski and bit it in half.” Brian escaped with nothing more than a skinned nose from brushing the shark’s fin as he fell into the water.

Almost a year to the day after Sierakowski’s attack, at the same strip of beach, a group of old friends who swim together every morning were their early morning swim. “I was a strange drizzly morning,” recalls Jerry Ventura. "and the water had a kind of an oily smell to it." His friend Ken Crewe, the strongest swimmer of the group, remarked that he thought he'd seen something out there. Crewe walked to the water while chatting with Dirk Avery. They both swam together for a while, the stronger swimmer keeping pace with his slower companion. As they neared the end of the swim, Dirk veered off to shore to take a short cut to the beach. Ken kept swimming in his strong steady freestyle.
 
The next thing anybody can remember is a cry that went up, "Shark, shark, get out of the water." Jerry Venturas looked around and saw Ken Crewe being borne up by a wave of water in the mouth of a great white pointer. The shark took chunks out of his leg, leaving him floating face down in the water, then went after Dick Avery. “It had my leg in its mouth and I was beating the water to try to get him away.” Avery got out of the shark’s jaws with just a few scars on his leg. But not one member of the group feels the same way about the sea.
 
Life Changing
Robert Drewe personally lost two young friends to the serial killings of the 60's. Even now people remember the fear that took over people's lives during the years before Cooke was caught. If there is one thing that can eat away at innocence, its danger. A killer on the loose in a small town where nothing much ever really happened before, sudden shark attacks at a beach people always treated as their backyard pool – these are seminal events that change not only the lives of the victims, but those of everyone who lived in that place in that time. Many of Cooke's victims were killed in their own homes while they slept. The last fatal shark attack in Perth happened right near the shore -  in water where people could stand up.
 
In the Shark’s Domain was produced by Dheera Sujan. The feature was originally broadcast in October 2001 as part of the series Sound Fountain.