A 16-year-old surfer has described how he ‘flicked off’ a shark and ‘legged it back to shore’ after being bitten on the foot at Middleton Beach in South Australia. Oliver Tokic-Bensley was surfing near his family’s beach house on Good Friday when the incident occurred, about 100 metres from shore.
Oliver said he had been in the water for around 10 minutes when the shark tugged him off his surfboard. ‘I flicked it off, almost the same that you do when a crab bites your foot … and then I don’t know if that really did anything, but it let go and I just legged it back to shore,’ he told reporters. He then paddled to catch a wave and checked his wounds on the beach, taking photos to show his friends.
The teenager was taken to Victor Harbor Hospital by his father, where his wounds were washed, disinfected, X-rayed and bandaged. He has been taking antibiotics and expects to return to the water in about two weeks. Oliver believes the shark was a bronze whaler, based on seeing its fin.
Shark Watch South Australia noted that bites from bronze whalers are ‘incredibly rare’. The last recorded shark bite at Middleton Beach was in June 2014, when a white shark bit a 15-year-old boy. South Australia has accounted for 36 of Australia’s 560 shark bite reports from 2000 to 2025, with only two involving bronze whalers.
Oliver attributed the incident to murky conditions caused by a windy, stormy day. ‘It was in the evening, it was sort of a stormy, choppy day, it was really murky and stuff, so I’ll probably avoid that,’ he said.
