Two holidaymakers told how they saved a teenager's life by using an electrical extension cord as a tourniquet after his leg had been ripped off by a great white shark.
The teenager is thought to have been attacked when the shark mistook him for a seal or a turtle as he rode the waves lying on a bodyboard, a cut-down surfboard.
Zak Golebiowski, 15, was brought ashore in Western Australia on his elder brother's surfboard, his right leg missing below the knee - and it was then that tourists Amy Worling, 26, and Pete Hickmott, 32, went into action to save his life.
'We thought he might die when we first saw him,' said Miss Worling. 'He'd lost a lot of blood - the sea was red with his blood behind him - and his face was grey.
'I'd heard one of them yell out for help and when we ran down the beach one of the boys Zac had been with was crying out "We need a car!"
The injured boy was bleeding badly from the wound and I knew he would need bandaging so I grabbed a hoodie (a hooded cloak) and a towel.
'I helped get him onto the beach and then tied the hoodie around his leg and put the towel over him.'
The holidaymakers and Zak's 18-year-old brother Sam carried the shocked and bleeding teenager up the lonely beach - on Western Australia's south west corner - to the tourists' car.
There, Miss Worling used an extension cord as a tourniquet, tying it tight around what was left of Zak's leg. Then the group sped to a caravan park where police and an ambulance were summoned from the town of Esperance, an hour's drive away.
In a hastily-arranged rescue operation, it was arranged the group would start driving to Esperance as the emergency services headed towards them, meeting along the way. As they drove, the group sang to Zak, trying to keep him conscious.
But Miss Worling said that at one point the teenager said: "Can you please not talk to me." He just wanted to stay calm and zone out.'
As the New Zealand tourists were being hailed heroes - praise they dismissed - wildlife officers agreed the great white had probably attacked Zac because, viewed from below, his silhouette on his surfboard would have resembled one of the sea creatures - a turtle or a seal - that was in the shark's normal food chain.
Throughout, police and wildlife officials scoured the area of the attack looking for the shark. Because great whites are protected, the plan was to herd any shark that was spotted further out to sea rather than kill it.
'Nothing would be gained by killing every great white we see in the area because it might not be the shark that attacked Zak,' said Mr Tony Cappelluti, the 'incident controller' at Western Australia's Department of Fisheries.
But if a great white was threatening a busy beach area and it could not be frightened away, it would be killed, he said.
'Much as I respect the fact that the ocean is the shark's domain and we enter it at our own peril, if a shark is in a place where people are swimming and is endangering lives then I have no hesitation in seeing it destroyed,' he said.
The teenager's mother, Mrs Anne Golebiowski, who visited him in hospital where he is in a serious but stable condition, said: 'He knows that people get taken by sharks and they they die, so he's very fortunate to be alive.'
Great whites - among nature's most fearsome predators - can grow to 21ft in length.
If Zac had not received prompt treatment, he could have become Western Australia's fourth shark attack fatality in the past six years.
In 2000, Perth businessman Ken Crew, 49, died after one of his legs was ripped off by what was believed to be a 12ft great white which attacked him close to Perth's popular Cottesloe Beach.
Four years later, 30-year-old Brad Smith was ripped in two by a great white while surfing at Gracetown, about 180 miles south of Perth.
Then in March last year, 26-year-old Geoffrey Brazier was killed by a huge 18ft great white while snorkelling off the Abrolhos Islands which lie some 40 miles from the Western Australian coast.
A shark alarm was raised on the other side of the Australian continenent after 32-year-old professional fisherman Mick McGillivray, using a rod and line from his boat, hauled in two great whites where hundreds of bathers normally swim at Evans Head, in northern New South Wales. After each catch, on two consecutive days, he cut the sharks loose but he said he was concerned that a number of great whites had been seen feeding on small fish less than 70 yards from the shore.
