followed him in his shadow all the way back
to Australia and beyond. Fanning and Wilson
held a once-and-for-all press conference upon
landing in Sydney hoping to satiate the media
machine and put some space between. The
pair were jovial, but visibly still reeling from the
intensity of their lurid experiences.
The press conference however didn’t deliver
the privacy they had hoped for, with media
on the Gold Coast spending much of the next
week camped on Mick’s from door at his Tugun
home - hoping to catch a glimpse of the 3-time
world champion and be there when he hit the
water for the first time back.
60 Minutes had secured the exclusive and were
there for that first surf, testing fate by hitting
what is considered one of the most sharkladen locations in the entire Northern Rivers
region - Hastings Point.
“
I was watching the screen
and it was exactly as if I
was watching myself getting
attacked - seeing my own
attack - Mike Hoile
Mike Hoile was watching all of this, on the TV
and the internet, in the papers and everywhere
else - inescapably reliving his own experience.
Hoile was watching on live as Fanning’s J-Bay
incident unfolded, and he admits it sent shivers
through his body. Mike goes on to tell LiQUiFY
about it “I was watching when it happened to Mick,
and it was just unbelievable - I couldn’t believe
it. I was watching the screen and it was
exactly as if I was watching myself getting
attacked - seeing my own attack. Then there
was that period of 20 seconds or so where he
disappeared behind the wave and we couldn’t