A windsurfer has described how he made a miraculous getaway from a shark attack – escaping with just a bitten board.
Andy McDonald, 61, was riding his hydrofoil board at Bombie surf break near Margaret River, a popular destination in Western Australia, when he encountered a shark in a swell of waves on Monday.
He said he “fell onto” the shark, before adrenaline kicked in and he began “punching” it. “Just out of the blue – bang. It felt like a freight train,” he told ABC News. “Something came up from under the water and just propelled me up into the sky.”
Mr McDonald, who is originally from Melbourne, said that he “knew” he was experiencing a shark attack, and thought, “Well, this is it.”
Incredibly, he escaped unscathed, except for a bite to his board.
“Yeah, I fell onto it,” he said in a video uploaded to local newspaper the Augusta Margaret River Mail’s Facebook page. “It was wrapped around me... You’ve got two leashes, you’ve got a leash around your wrist and around your waist, and it was, like, in me. I was like, punching it.
“And then I had my sail, and I jumped up on the sail just to get out of the water. And then I started yelling for help.”
He said he was then rescued by his friend “Matto”, named by ABC News as Neil Mattinson, who helped push him back to land.
“I’m good! I live to tell the story,” a cheerful Mr McDonald says in the footage, as the camera zooms in on a large chunk missing from his board. “I don’t think I’ll sleep for a week.”
Mr McDonald said he did not see the shark, but he estimated the size of the bite to be around 350 to 380 millimetres in diameter. He added that someone on the beach had told him it looked like the bite could have come from a juvenile white pointer shark.
A spokesperson for the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development said that the board would be tested, but results would take up to two weeks.
“We are in the process of accessing the board, and will conduct analysis of the foil board to confirm the species of shark involved,” they said.
The department issued a warning for the Prevelly area, and urged beachgoers to exercise caution in the water.
According to the Australian Shark Incident Database, maintained by Taronga Conservation Society Australia, there have been 17 shark “incidents” so far in 2025. Of these, three have been fatal.
