Byron Bay old timers will tell you Belongil Beach, where last Sunday’s shark attack took place, was known as Sharkie’s Beach until the early 1960s.

Sharkbait ... the iconic image from Jaws.

Before well-heeled city slickers started to holiday in droves in this north coast idyll, the long stretch of white sand that stretches from Byron’s Main Beach to the mouth of Belongil Creek ran rich with red blood from the nearby meatworks. They called it the “bloodline”.

The meatworks pumped the blood from the kills at the abattoirs along the side of the old jetty. It ran into the ocean at the end of the jetty. That’s what brought the sharks and the name to the beach.

The name disappeared but clearly all the sharks did not, as surfer/teacher Sam Edwardes learnt last Sunday when he luckily survived an attack by a great white. I thought a lot about the randomness of this attack this week as I sat in a shark summit at the University of Sydney.