Charlie Vercoe

speaker

799 appearances 2 recordings 2 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 26 Jun

Charlie Vercoe’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 2.

Appearances

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Straight Talk with Mark Bouris · Shark Attack Hero Shares the Story of the Terrifying Coogee Rescue · 25 Jun 2026 podcast

I think I mentioned before, just spending so much time in the water

You spend a lot of time scared of what's going to happen to you if there's a shark going on and planning for that and mitigating the risk to that.

But then beyond that, you go, okay, I saw a video of a shark attack that happened recently down the coast.

And okay, if I was near that situation, what would I do?

And I think that's the only way you can kind of prepare for a situation like that.

the more thought that you have about taking action, the more likely you are to actually have that thought come across your mind when the adrenaline hits you in such an intense situation.

And that's the way I like to think about it.

It's never going to be you're in that scenario, you know exactly what to do, and then you spring straight into action.

It's just having the

enough time thinking about what it takes to help someone that actually keeps you there and doesn't just make you focus on getting yourself to the beach in the shark example.

So in all the time in between when Shark was first yelled and getting her onto the beach, no.

And that's where I think I have to come back to that you can only prepare yourself to make decisions in that moment by having spent enough time thinking about it because you don't

I like to think I was rational because I trained myself to be, but I definitely didn't think you've got to breathe, you've got to try and bring your heart rate down so you can make good decisions.

That was almost instinctive by having to do that so many times through...

Other stressful situations, albeit slightly less stressful, being sport.

I grew up being terrified of Big Surf, and I think managing that fear really helped it.

But at the same time, once I got to the beach and saw that there were experts there that could provide more help than I could and felt comfortable stepping away, I did instantaneously, or almost instantaneously, I wanted to check my dad was safe, check the rest of the water was evacuated.

You did?

Yeah, because dad was paddling on a ski about a couple hundred meters ahead of me.

Ahead of you, yeah.

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