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Hello, I'm James Reynolds.

Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

In BBC conversations, we bring people together to share their experiences.

This time, we hear from three Australians who survived shark attacks.

Many of us, quite naturally, have a visceral fear of sharks, stoked in part by movies and by popular culture.

With fear comes fascination. When people

survive an attack, we want to hear about their experiences and then the effect it's had on their

lives. Justine Barwick was attacked by a shark while sailing in the Witsunday Islands. Brett Connolland

encountered a great white shark while surfing in New South Wales,

and that was where Dave Pearson himself was also attacked. Dave began by taking me back to 2011

when he went to surf on the coast after work. I had a new board, so I was pretty keen to get down into the water.

Give my neighbour a call and said, come on, I'm heading out the beach.

I want to lift. So I took him down and me, him and my dog turned up at the beach. There was one young guy already out there, a friend of ours called Nottie, and another guy, Sean, turned up while we were there. So the three of us paddled out together. I'd only been in the water, probably not even 10 minutes. and this is where a lot of fortunate things happen for me.

And number one is I was looking off. out together. I'd only been in the water, probably not even 10 minutes. And this is where a lot of

fortunate things happened for me. And number one is I was looking off to my left hand side where the guys

were. And the shark came from just off to the right hand side from the front of the board. And as it came

up, its bottom jaw hit the surfboard. I guess its teeth become stuck into the board. And as the shark flipped out of the water, because I was paddling, my left arm had gone forward. And as its top jaw came down, it trapped my right arm between the surfboard and its top teeth. And because it was flying out of the water, it then took me down to the bottom with it. And as its teeth ran across

the top of my arm, it took all my forearm muscle and damaged tendons in my wrist and thumb.

But fortunately, it actually hit me in the head on the way through. So I was semi-conscious for most

of it. And the shark obviously had a bit of a sore nose from hitting him inside of my thick head. So we got to the bottom, wrestled around for a couple of it and the shark obviously had a bit of a sore nose from hitting him inside of my thick

head so we got to the bottom wrestled around for a couple of seconds and then parted ways and i swum back

...