Navy diver Paul de Gelder survived a savage shark attack, but despite his horrific injuries, as he tells us, he’s not going to let that stand in his way.
It was a beautiful February morning, with the early sun dancing on the still waters of Sydney Harbour. From his position, swimming on his back between Garden Island and Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, navy diver Paul de Gelder could see the elegant lines of the Opera House.
The anti-terrorism exercise was just another day at work for Paul, 32, but that was about to change in a heartbeat. He was struck from below, a bone-jarring jolt that took his breath away. In milliseconds, he flipped over and found himself staring straight into the cold, black eyes of a massive bull shark – one of the ocean’s most aggressive predators, known as “the pit bull of the sea”.
His left leg was in the shark’s jaws and he went to lash at the shark with his left hand, planning to jab it in the eye, but it was too late. Its razor-sharp teeth had already closed around his wrist. “I tried to push it off with my other hand and punch it on the nose, then it started shaking me,” says Paul. “Sharks have teeth that work like a saw and that’s when the pain started. It was all instinct: fight or flight.
“I didn’t feel anything after it shook me … the adrenalin kicked in. I didn’t have time to think. I didn’t even know that my hand was gone. It was only when I started swimming freestyle to get away and back to the boat that I looked up and there was no hand there.”
Amazingly, the former paratrooper had the presence of mind – after four years of intensive naval training – to sidestroke his way back to his boat.
His shocked colleagues hauled him aboard and, through his daze, he heard them swear. His face was so white, his supervisor thought he was dead. Yet, when Paul’s eyes started rolling back in his head, he punched him hard, to try to keep him awake. Everyone knew that was his only chance of survival.
The attack on Paul sent shockwaves around the country. It was the fifth shark attack in two months and the first in Sydney Harbour in a decade. A day later, a surfer was mauled off Bondi Beach. As hysteria reached fever pitch and made front-page news, Paul was fighting for his life in Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital.
His girlfriend of a year, Kim Elliott, 29, stayed by his side constantly.
“When they phoned me to say he’d been attacked by a shark, I didn’t believe it at first,” she says. “I thought it was a joke. But when they insisted and I asked if he was all right, they just said I should get to hospital quickly.
“The doctors there told me he’d lost a hand and would probably lose his leg, too. My first thought was that he wouldn’t be able to ride his beloved motorbike again, but then I was just thrilled he was alive.”
Paul begged the doctors to save his savagely mauled leg, but, unable to feel his foot, he was filled with dread. “They gave me the option: I could keep the leg, which would be useless and I’d just drag it around for years, or they’d take it off and give me a prosthetic. They explained that if they cut it off, I could be up and running with a prosthetic within 12 months. It wasn’t that tough a decision.”
Your say: What words of encouragement would you like to send to Paul? Did the spate of shark attacks last summer frighten you at all? Share your thoughts below…
Read the rest of this incredible story in the December issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly out now with Julie Goodwin on the cover.
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