Dave Pearson

The day they were kicking me out of hospital, she was still up in intensive care, so we sat down and had a chat.

And it was quite enlightening.

We both had injuries to our left arm.

We both had injuries to the right side of our head.

I have to say my injuries are nothing compared to hers.

So we just talked about our attacks to each other and how...

familiar her attack was to mine and how mine was to her.

And I took something away from that straight away.

It was like, wow, this is, you know, it's a tough meeting and it always is, but there's a connection there straight away.

And I often say like meeting other shark attack survivors are like family that you've never met before because you've got that connection.

You don't have to worry about that awkward, you know, getting to know someone.

you can talk about one of their worst experiences straight up and you go through the, I guess the learning phase of each other's life very quickly.

And so you become very comfortable with each other very quickly after you have that conversation.

And, you know, her mum and dad were in there with her as well at the same time.

So I get to sail out of the family because, you know, Bike Club, we treat it like a family.

So any family members welcome in our group and welcome at any event we do because it's family members that get us through the worst of our tough lives sometimes.

And...

Yeah, I just love meeting families as well because, you know, they're often sitting there in trauma with nothing to say about it, but you know they're suffering through it as well.

So it's nice to give them recognition, but plus to also offer them some support.

And Deb does that a lot.