“Like fighting a brick wall”: Australian mother fights shark and survives

When she found herself face to face with the eyes of a four-meter-long (13 feet) great white shark, Leah Stewart was determined not to let it kill her. "You are not taking me away from my daughter," Stewart, a 35-year-old mother from Sydney, recalled thinking at that moment in an interview with the program 60 Minutes.

“I’m the woman who punched a shark in the face,” she said. “I’m the woman who fought like crazy to be here, to be here for August. It was the hardest thing in the world, but I fought tooth and nail to get out of there.”

August is Stewart's infant daughter, from whom she said goodbye on the sand just before entering the water at Coogee Beach on June 13 this year.

While her partner Fernando was abroad, Stewart spent time at the beach with her family and swam between the flags near the shoreline when the giant shark suddenly attacked. "Its face was terrifying," she said. "I will never forget that face. It was enormous; its teeth and mouth were monstrous, and its eyes were black, small, and beady. We looked straight into each other's eyes. It got to the point where it was about 30 centimeters from my face."

The incident was the first shark attack at Coogee Beach in over two hundred years.

At the hospital, Leah was in critical condition. The shark bite tore off the outer muscle in Leah's left thigh and so severely amputated her left arm that it had to be surgically removed. Her right hand was also injured, resulting in serious damage to nerves and tendons. Leah didn't know if she would ever be able to walk again, but now she has returned to standing on her feet and is even learning to write again.

Stewart recalled during the events: "I heard a girl behind me just screaming, a sort of sharp, high-pitched scream. I turned around and saw a huge fin behind her." "When it grabbed my leg, the thought crossed my mind: 'That's it. This is how I die.' It locked its jaws on my leg, and I thought: 'This is my moment.' And then I just thought about August. I thought, 'She won't have a mother. She'll grow up without a mother,' and I couldn't bear it. I thought: 'I have to fight this. I'll do everything I can to be here,'" she recounted.

"I felt him shaking me, and somehow I managed to turn my body. I knew I had to hit him with all my strength. I turned myself and just started punching him again and again and again. Punch, punch, punch. He was so big. It was like hitting a brick wall," she said.

Coogee Beach is famous worldwide, and for good reason. The spectacular stretch of sand in Sydney’s eastern suburbs is a magnet for both locals and tourists. For Leah, Fernando, and August, it is home, a central part of their lives. Leah could often be found in the water. “That’s how I let go and process everything that’s on my mind. That swim was what I looked forward to every day. It was my thing,” she told 60 Minutes.

Although she was a highly fit and confident swimmer, Leah was aware of the danger of sharks. "I would never swim at sunrise or sunset. I always tried to stay very close to the shore," she said. "I tried to do everything right, but when you go into the water, there is a risk."