Victoria’s last fatal shark attack that maybe never was

Retired sergeant Jim Lowe still remembers the deep, swirling blue. The windsurfer’s board was unscathed and untethered from its owner, whose body bobbed like an unmoored buoy for days in the swell.

The bite was so big it must have belonged to a monster. Yet somehow, the truth got twisted.

For years, official records have misreported Victoria’s last fatal shark attack as in 1987, off Wilsons Promontory, but The Age uncovered the largely unknown story behind the mystery death – and the true timing of the attack.

The discovery started with a long-held hunch by librarian Michelle Stillman, who has seen the 1987 figure crop up in shark attack timelines over the years – but without any historical newspaper reports to back it up.

The incorrect date has appeared since at least 2012 in Australia’s official shark incident database – compiled by the Taronga Conservation Society Australia – and repeated by official sources, including the Victorian Fisheries Authority.

“In Australia, if you so much as murmur the word ‘shark’ on a beach, everyone pays attention and yet, supposedly, someone was killed by a shark in Victorian waters – a rarity – and there’s no record at all?” says Stillman, a librarian at The Age since 1988.

“It just didn’t ring true. But I still had to include it as a possibility as the incident was listed as having occurred on official sites.”

The fisheries authority again cited the 1987 figure in a recent story, prompting questions to Taronga about their original source: an article from an old windsurfing magazine, Sail Wind Quarterly.

Taronga research biologist David Slip tracked down the original clipping of the article, which explained that an “extremely experienced” rider appeared to be separated from his board before he was attacked, mid-swim, with catastrophic results.

It could have been that the rider was mistaken for a seal by a great white shark, for which the area was notorious, the author theorised.

The windsurfer was last seen sailing about 1.5 kilometres out to sea, and washed up dead several days later. His board and rig were found intact.

The article was undated, but there were clues as to its timing: one, an ad for a speed sailing competition, which Slip realised his colleague must have mistaken as happening in 1987. Records suggested it occurred the year prior.

After the windsurfing magazine article surfaced, Stillman found a brief reference in the September 2, 1986, edition of The Age to missing Western Australian windsurfer William Crouch, 32, who was last seen off Waratah Bay – north-west of Wilsons Promontory – on August 31, two days earlier.

With Crouch’s name, a call to local newspaper, the South Gippsland Sentinel-Times, unearthed the final piece of evidence to crack the mystery: a report about the attack, dated September 16, 1986.

The article revealed a government pathologist believed a shark charged Crouch while he was swimming or after he drowned, so doubts lingered over his cause of death. Another young surfer told then-police sergeant Jim Lowe they saw a shark nearby about the time of Crouch’s disappearance.

“It took a combination of clippings, digitised newspapers and bound volumes of the original newspapers to verify the missing windsurfer as the drowning victim and possible shark attack victim,” Stillman says.

“Finally being able to confirm the correct date as being 1986 and now having the name of the victim is a pleasing tying up of loose ends to a mystery I didn’t think I’d resolve.”

The Australian shark incident database has since corrected its entry because of The Age’s findings.

Lowe, aged 89, still lives in Foster, about 20 minutes’ drive from Waratah Bay, where Crouch was last seen alive.

The now-retired sergeant has 13 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren, and rarely goes down for a swim these days – particularly after Crouch’s remains were found all those years ago.

But today, he’s looking out over the bay, reflecting on the 32-year-old from Western Australia. Police believe he set out from Walkerville South, intending to windsurf about 10 kilometres over to Sandy Point.

It’s still unclear how far Crouch travelled and where his body later ended up.

“We assumed that he was blown off the surfboard and was actually swimming because his harness was separated from him,” Lowe says.

“His autopsy showed massive, massive shark attack injuries.

“The size of the shark must have been huge. I can’t say any more than that.”

More than a dozen shark sightings have been reported off Victoria’s coastline this summer on the crowdsourcing shark alert app, Dorsal – including many on the southern edge of Port Phillip Bay.

An uptick in sightings isn’t unusual for this time of year, given more people are out on the water, according to the fisheries authority.

A number of tagged great white sharks live around the heads of the bay, which otherwise has strong populations of gummy and mako sharks.

After Crouch’s death, Lowe gave an interview on local radio, in which he says he emphasised one point: the ocean is where sharks live.

At the time, half a dozen locals called him afterwards to agree. It’s something he stands by today: as long as people venture into the sharks’ habitat, they run the risk – albeit a small one – of confronting a beast.

“It’s a bit like walking into the wild in Africa,” Lowe says.

Lowe’s memories of Crouch’s case have faded in the decades since, but the year of his disappearance – 1986 – remains clear, as Lowe retired from the police force in 1987.

He remembers once flying over the entrance to Shallow Inlet, which opens onto Waratah Bay, and seeing sharks there in the shallows.

Their snouts were pointed towards the bank, and they were lined up like soldiers.

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