KEY POINTS:
SYDNEY - The man who saved a teenage girl from the jaws of a great white shark says the "monster" was "easily the length of a car".
Syb Mundy, 33, was surfing on Sunday afternoon with his 13-year-old cousin Hannah Mighall at Binalong Bay, near St Helens, in
Tasmania's north-east, when a 5m white pointer latched onto her leg.
The shark dragged the girl under the water twice before her cousin reached the scene on his surfboard.
"It took her under the water a couple of times and it was thrashing her around, but she kept her head together," Mr Mundy told Macquarie Radio.
"Once it let her go she was bleeding pretty bad. There was a lot of blood in the water."
He paddled to her rescue and hit the shark on the head.
"I can remember seeing the eye come out of the water and the head and I was going to try and poke it in the eye if I could get close enough," Mr Mundy said.
The shark let go of her leg but then it grabbed her surfboard, which was tethered to her ankle, before it let go for the last time, he said.
"I think it just didn't like the taste of her, to tell you the truth."
Mr Mundy said they were up to 70m from the beach and saw an opportunity to get away from the shark.
"Luckily a wave come along and she was on my back and I said, `Hannah please, this wave is going to save your life, don't let go'," he said.
"But the shark actually got on to the wave. We looked to our left and this thing started surfing towards us and we just headed straight to the beach."
The shark continued to harass them until they made it on to the beach, he said.
A doctor, who happened to be on hand, wrapped Hannah's leg in a towel until emergency crews arrived.
"It sort of circled us. We were paddling in and it was just circling us and coming up underneath us and she was really composed."
Mr Mundy said hitting the shark on the head "was like hitting a brick wall - it was that dense".
"I didn't have a tape to measure it but it was huge. It was easily the length of a car.
"It was just a monster."
The attack was the second such incident on Sunday.
Emergency services were called to Fingal Head, south of Tweed Heads, on the far north NSW coast, following reports a 31-year-old board rider had been attacked by a shark just before 9.30am (AEDT).
The man suffered a 40cm tear to his left thigh while surfing about 70 metres offshore.
He was flown to hospital in a stable condition.
- AAP
