Dave Pearson

So it took us...

just more than 10 minutes to get out of the surf.

And in that period, I'd lost 40% of my blood.

So that was obviously the main struggle, which we didn't realize at the time was that Dave might go into cardiac arrest and die.

So fortunately, my mates, we all know first aid and I'm so thankful that we do.

And they took such good care of me until we could get the paramedics on the side.

As soon as we hit the beach, Sean, I remember Sean screaming out, just get his leg rope.

And I pulled my leg rope off, wrapped it around my arm.

I think they grabbed a stick that my dog come running down within his mouth and used that to tighten it up to stop the bleeding on my arm.

I remember Aaron saying, you know, hold his arm above his heart.

So, you know, try and keep the blood from going that direction.

And also tell them one of the young guys who watching the commotion had got out further up the beach and had come up and he goes, look, we need to get an ambulance and a chopper here.

Tell them we've had a shark attack and we need to get them here as soon as possible.

So, you know, all the things that we're trying to do in first aid in an emergency situation, I was just listening to guys doing that thinking, wow, how awesome is this to be taken care of by guys who know what they're doing?

It's a bit of a story.

I was supposed to be cooking dinner that afternoon.

That was what she said, yeah.

Yeah, so we got out.

The guys sort of dragged me up the beach and threw me on a picnic table.

I remember my neighbour also, my neighbour Scott, he became another tourniquet where he squeezed my arm so tight that he managed to stop any extra bleeding coming out.