THE ONE THAT DIDN'T GET AWAY

A monster fish decimates the towns of Wilhemina & Westmoreland in 1978

Late April 1978

Bob Dekker had been fishing at Jacobson’s Lake, midway between Wilhelmina and Perry, all that Sunday without a single bite. By 5:30 PM, he was ready to pack it in for the day.

He had already started to stand up when there suddenly came one hell of a tug on the fishing line. Caught off balance, he almost somersaulted head over heels into the lake.

Fighting against the pull (and gravity), he managed to collapse in a heap on the grassy bank, instead of in the water -- more by luck than by skill. Even more luckily, the fish was still on the hook. Although by the time he recovered his senses and reached for the rod, almost half the line had played out.

Bob began hurriedly reeling in slack until he could feel the tug of the fish on the other end.

He was astonished by the fight in the as yet unseen creature. In the past, Bob had caught ten-kilo trout with lines half the strength of this one. But as the whopper fought him, he started to fear it would be too heavy for him to reel in. If the rod holds together! Bob thought, dismayed by the sight of his brand new rod bent almost double. Although modern rods have an incredible amount of give, Bob feared that the rod would not give enough to survive the battle with the fighting fish.

Bob fought the unseen fish for almost an hour, until at last he forced it to the surface of the lake ....

And he almost dropped his new rod in horror at the sight of the monstrous fish. More than half a metre in length, it was the thickness of a large man’s calf, with a shiny, smooth, scale-less flesh, coloured in lurid splashes of black, crimson, navy, emerald, and orange, like a brightly coloured Mardi Gras mask. Its five fins -- two on top, one on each side, one underneath -- were easily twenty centimetres in length. But none of that made Bob gasp and almost drop the fish back into the lake. Most of it he only saw later ....

As the fish surfaced, the first thing Bob Dekker saw was its mouth: a great cavernous mouth, ringed with row upon row of needle-like teeth. A mouth that opened outwards to an almost impossible angle, like a flip-top cigarette pack.

Bob’s first thought at the sight of those teeth was to cut the line and allow the fish to escape. His second thought was overwhelming curiosity.

The prospect of lifting such a large fish out of the water while avoiding those razor-like teeth was daunting. But after fifty years, Bob was an expert fisherman and managed the task without any major problems.

Although his stomach growled to be fed, Bob’s only thought was to take his catch to nearby Harpertown to show the fish to Pete Carroll. A teacher at Harpertown Combined (primary and high school), Pete was the nearest thing the area had to a zoological expert.

Wilhelmina was three train stations away from the much larger Harpertown. But due to the curvature of the track, the two towns weren’t quite four kilometres apart. A distance which was an easy walk for a countryman born and bred like Bob.

On Sunday evenings, Pete attended meetings of the Pure Water Society.

Realising that he was late for the meeting, Bob headed straight for Mayor Bernard Reichbold’s three-storey, redbrick home in James Matra Drive.

The Pure Water Society had been formed the year before to protest the pollution of Jacobson’s Lake in Wilhelmina by Frank Warner. Warner daily led his small herd of Jersey cattle three kilometres across country to water them in the lake, to save the expense of digging a waterhole on his cattle station.

When at last he was admitted to the ground floor of the mayor’s house, Bob ignored the pointed glances at wristwatches. Slamming the fish basket down on the small glass-topped coffee table in the centre of the lounge room where the society had gathered, he opened the basket wide and demanded:

“What do you think of that?”

“Oh, my God!” cried Sandra Reichbold, before fainting to the lounge room floor.

“What the Hell is it?” demanded Pete Carroll, who had jumped away from the table in shock. His cobalt blue eyes shone with terror behind the lenses of his glasses.

“I was hoping you could tell me,” said Bob. “You’re supposed to be the local wildlife expert. “I just caught it in Jacobson’s Lake.”

“It’s a sea demon, that’s what it is!” insisted Tommy Waterhouse, a tall, burly sheep farmer. He stared down in horror at the monstrous fish in the basket.

“Oh Tommy, don’t be ridiculous,” scoffed Doris Edmontson -- headmistress of Harpertown Combined.

“Ridiculous am I?” demanded Tommy, “I’ll have you know I’ve been fishing for more than forty years, and I’ve never seen anything like that. I’ve only ever once even heard of a fish like this. About a dozen years ago, a group of Maori fishermen claimed to have caught a devilfish off the coast of Omapere on the North Island of New Zealand. They described the devilfish as a large, multicoloured fish, with razor-sharp teeth and great jaws which opened outward like a cigarette packet. They used a ceremonial knife to behead the fish, then buried it inland -- afraid that, even after beheading and burning, salt water might somehow revive the demon.”

He paused for a moment to let them consider what he had said, then added, “I’m telling you this thing is evil, and the only sensible thing to do is burn it right now!”

“Oh really?” asked Doris, not bothering to keep the contempt from her voice. “My God, this thing could be the zoological find of the century, and you want to burn it?”

“For Christ’s sake, Bob, get that bloody thing out of here!” shouted Bernard Reichbold. While they had been arguing, the mayor had lifted his wife into an armchair and was trying to bring her around.

“We can take it to my office for now,” offered Doris.


Ten minutes later, they deposited the basket on Doris’ desk to the horror of Tommy Waterhouse, who had tagged along, leaving his wife at the mayor’s house.

“You oughta kill the damn thing!” insisted Tommy.

“Don’t be childish,” said Doris, “it’s already dead by now.”

Pete started to agree when suddenly the basket began to rustle furiously. The four people jumped away from the table in shock, half expecting the fish to leap out of the basket at them.

After a few seconds, the thrashing died down. But no one approached the table again for more than a minute.

“We oughta kill it, it’s evil!” insisted Tommy.

“Oh Tommy, for God’s sake, shut up!” ordered Doris. Although she made no move to approach the basket. “If you haven’t got anything useful to say, go back to the mayor’s house.”

“I’ve got as much right as anyone to be here,” said Tommy, pouting.

Doris started to reply, then stopped, realising that he was right. Strictly speaking, she shouldn’t have been using the office herself outside working hours.

“So what should we do with it?” asked Bob Dekker.

“We oughta kill it!”

Ignoring Tommy, Doris said, “As I said earlier, this ... this thing is the zoological find of the century. I have a friend at the Zoological Gardens in Melbourne. I think we ought to call him in to have a look at it.”

“Do you think Harry would be prepared to come all the way from Melbourne to see a single specimen?” asked Pete, sceptical.

“To see a find like this?” asked Doris. Moving around the table, careful not to get too near to the basket, she picked up the telephone receiver and started dialling. “He’d fly to the moon by flapping his arms, if he knew something like this was up there!”

Doris Edmontson talked on the phone for nearly ten minutes. At first, her friend was sceptical that they had made a major zoological find. But after Doris described the fish in detail, Harry became very excited and promised to catch the midnight train from Flinders Street to be at Harpertown by nine o'clock the next morning.

Then, despite Tommy Waterhouse’s continued insistence that they should destroy the demon fish, Bob Dekker took his catch back to his general store in Chatterton Street, Wilhelmina. In the back room of the store was a two-door fridge-freezer, which Bob used to keep fish and bait fresh. It was into this that he placed the large fish to ensure that it wouldn’t spoil overnight. Then he retired to his living quarters above the store.


Despite his impatience to get on with his task, Tommy Waterhouse forced himself to lie patiently beside his wife, Myrtle, until her breathing told him that she was asleep. Then, as quietly as possible, he collected his clothes from the chair beside his bed and crept out into the corridor to dress.

Fifteen minutes later, Tommy was creeping down a cobbled alleyway, heading toward the back entrance to Bob Dekker’s general store. Using a jemmy, he smashed one of the small panes on the door, then reached in to unlock the door, silently cursing himself for the noise that he was making.

Having been fishing with Bob many times down the years, Tommy knew where the bait room was and didn’t have to waste time locating it in the dark. He jimmied the plywood door open without difficulty.

Not daring to turn on the light, he focused the penlight around the large room to locate the fridge-freezer. My God, you’re an ugly monster! Tommy thought, staring in at the brightly coloured fish.

Taking a Bowie knife from a scabbard at his waist, he reached in toward the large fish ....

When the fish suddenly began to pulse, almost like a beating heart.

“What the ...?” said Tommy as the fish’s jaws snapped open. He dropped the knife in fright, and the fish suddenly swallowed his right arm to the elbow.

At first, he thought that the fish had leapt forward, but then he realised he was wrong. It’s growin’! Tommy thought, even as the monster fish started chomping on his right arm. Somehow the bloody thing is growin’! He started screaming, as much from terror as from agony, as the fish started to devour him alive.

At first, less than a metre in length, the fish quickly elongated to two, three, then four metres in length, almost destroying the fridge as it burst out to continue to swallow Tommy’s arm.

By that time, Tommy had finally come to his senses and started to run toward the door to the general store, blood spurting from his right shoulder where his arm had been severed.


Excited by the thought of the fame that his catch might bring him, Bob Dekker found sleep hard to come by. When at last he dropped off, he was awakened half an hour later by a loud noise in the store below. He lay awake listening for a moment. He had almost convinced himself that it had been a mouse when there came the unmistakable sound of footsteps downstairs.

Jesus, the store’s being burgled! Bob thought, climbing out of bed.

Hurrying into his dressing gown, he grabbed up his pump-action shotgun, plus a handful of cartridges. Then, as quietly as possible, Bob tiptoed out onto the second-floor landing and crept down the rickety old staircase, wincing at every creak that the stairs made.

At the base of the stairs, he used the barrel of the shotgun to part the curtain across the entrance to the front of the store. Stepping out behind the glass-topped counter, he slowly looked around the store, half expecting someone to jump out of the dark at him at any second.

With the store now quiet, he had to rely on his eyesight in the dark to try to detect any figures hiding in the shadows. He started toward a stack of shovels near a corner of the store in case someone was hiding there. He was still a couple of metres short of the shovels when there suddenly erupted a riot of sound behind him. Startled, he fired the shotgun into the pile of shovels. Cursing his stupidity, he quickly turned, expecting to be attacked from behind.

After a moment, Bob realised that the hellish din was coming from the rooms behind the store. He raced back to the counter, through the curtain, then started toward the stairs. Then he heard the tumultuous crashing coming from his bait room at the very back of the store.

As he neared the bait room, he recognised the noise for what it was: a loud human screaming, plus a strange sloshing thumping sound, like some hard, wet object being bashed about the walls and cabinets in the room.

Too terrified to enter the room, Bob headed back toward the front of the store to telephone the local police sergeant. Albert Jenkins didn’t like being called about police work outside working hours -- the country town’s police budget had no provisions for overtime. But Bob decided that the screams emanating from the bait room justified waking the policeman.

Bob had only taken a couple of steps back toward the store when the screaming abruptly ended. The crashing continued for a few minutes more, then it also ended. There was a sound like a snake slithering along the bait room floor, then a loud wooden splintering sound, followed by silence.

He waited outside the bait room door for a moment, trying to summon the courage to enter. Finally, he flung the door wide, switched on the light, and stared into the crimson coloured room ....

Which had been off-white only a few hours earlier.

For one crazy moment, Bob fantasised that someone had broken into his paint store, stolen some tins of red paint and hurriedly painted the walls and ceiling of the bait room. But then, seeing the pink and white splotches mixed in with the red, he realised that they were human entrails and finely minced organs ....

Mixed in amid four and a half litres of human blood covering virtually every square centimetre of the bait room walls and ceiling.

Bob felt his head swimming. Afraid to faint for fear of being at the mercy of whoever or whatever had caused this carnage, Bob forced his eyes away from the blood-splattered room and staggered back to his living quarters. He just reached the toilet before throwing up.


“I had hoped Bob was exaggerating,” said Albert Jenkins (a tall, thickset man in his late thirties), twenty minutes later as he and his constable, Dave Hollander, stood in the doorway, staring into the blood-painted bait room. “But no such luck.”

“Looks like Halloween came early this year,” said Dave, drawing a groan of dismay from his sergeant.

Although in most respects Dave was a good cop, in the four years he had been Albert’s constable, he had not yet learnt the important art of diplomacy.

After a quick look about the room from the doorway -- not wanting to step inside for fear of destroying any evidence -- Albert telephoned the local coroner, Marty Smollett.


By dawn, the coroner was finished.

“Well?” asked Albert.

Smollett heaved a sigh of dismay, having not been looking forward to this moment. Finally, he answered:

“To all intents and purposes, a man has been splattered across the walls and ceiling in this room.”

“Splattered?” asked Albert. He was surprised by the coroner’s use of such an unscientific word.

“All right then, minced, pulped, mashed, pureed,” elaborated the coroner. “Try to imagine an entire human being -- flesh, blood, bones, organs, and entrails -- reduced to something like lumpy cheese paste, then used like textured paint to coat every hard surface of the room.”

“But how? Who ...? What ...?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. There are a great deal of fingerprints on the back of the room. But we don’t know if they belong to the murderer, or to the victim ... Then there’s that.”

Smollett pointed to what looked like an enormous snail trail through the blood across the floor. The trail headed toward the back wall, where a great “pet door” had been hacked out of the weatherboards at floor level.

Recalling the sound of slithering, followed by wood splintering, Bob Dekker thought, That was it! He wished he could cover his ears, not wanting to hear what he knew Smollett was going to say next.

“Oh, and whatever you had in the fridge is gone,” said the coroner.

He pointed to the double-door fridge-freezer. One door had been broken off its hinges and lay on the floor. The other door was wide open, revealing the empty interior.

“Oh, it was nothing,” said Bob, trying to keep his voice even, “just a big fish I caught at Jacobson’s Lake yesterday.”


Having spent the morning walking up and down Wilhelmina, doing her shopping, Pamela Baker was looking forward to a good sit down. She would have preferred to head home, to kick off her shoes and hose, however, the small girl in the stroller insisted on heading to the park on Lemona Avenue instead.

Oh well, thought Pam, as she pushed the stroller, from which hung half a dozen shopping bags, maybe I can have a sit down while Jessica is playing? But she knew from experience that young Jessie would want her to push while Jessie swung, or take some other active part in the “fun”.

It’s my own fault, she thought as they entered the park. While shopping, she had managed to bribe Jessie out of wanting a chocolate bar or toy at every store they went past by promising to stop into the park on the way home.

As they approached the swings, Jessie almost overturned the stroller by jumping up and shouting, “Toy snake! Toy snake!”

Pam started to tell the little girl not to start that again. Then she saw that Jessie was pointing toward a grove of shaggy bushes a few metres from the sand pit where they were.

Seeing flashes of red, green, and blue, for a second, Pam thought that it was a live snake and started to back away in terror. Then, seeing the object more clearly, she thought, A papier-mâché fish! It’s a papier-mâché fish! and started toward it. She decided that as long as it wouldn’t cost her anything, this was one toy Jessie could have.

Unable to stoop in her weary state to pick up the brightly coloured fish, Pam used her left foot to stretch under the bush to gently kick at the fish ....

Young Jessie was clapping her hands in delight at the thought that this toy would soon be hers, when suddenly her mother started to scream.

Jessie watched in terror as the “toy snake” began to grow to three or four times its normal size, then swallowed her mother’s left leg to the knee. After a moment’s gnawing, the fish severed the leg completely, causing blood to gush from the jagged stump.

Pam fell to the ground screaming as the fish swallowed the mutilated leg, then started toward her again, still growing until it was nearly four metres in length.

Jessie started to scream herself as the fish swallowed her mother’s other leg and began crunching loudly through flesh and bone. As the fish chewed, blood spurted across the sand pit, the stroller and young Jessie, until the girl was drenched in her dying mother’s blood.

At the other end of the park, four teenagers heard Pam and Jessie’s screams and rushed over to offer help. At the sound of running footsteps, the fish turned tail and raced across the grass, back toward the thick clump of bushes, slowly shrinking back to its original size as it went.

“Oh hell!” cried a fifteen-year-old boy, looking down in horror at the mutilated remains of Pamela Baker. Turning away, he saw his girlfriend lying on the grass, having fainted.


Bob Dekker had been serving Old Man Hautman in the general store in Chatterton Street when the sirens raced past outside. About to lock up shop for lunch, Bob didn’t even shut the door behind him as he rushed out into the street to start after the rapidly disappearing ambulance and police car. Although the speeding vehicles were soon out of sight, he was able to follow the sirens until reaching Lemona Avenue.

At the park, Bob saw a large crowd gathered near the swings. Dave Hollander and Albert Jenkins were doing their best to hold back the gawkers while Marty Smollett stooped to examine whatever had attracted the crowd.

Elbowing his way through the crowd to reach Albert Jenkins, Bob asked, “What has happened?”

“Pamela Baker got herself pureed just like Tommy Waterhouse,” said Dave Hollander with his usual lack of tact.

“Tommy Waterhouse?” asked Bob.

“That’s who we think it was in the back of your store,” admitted Albert. He glared toward his constable. “We received a hysterical call from Myrtle this morning, reporting that Tommy had vanished in the early hours of the night ... And the blood type, AB positive, is the same as Tommy’s.”

Bob nodded his head from time to time, not listening as he watched while Marty Smollett did his best to make sense of the half woman lying on the grass. Disturbed by the teenagers, the fish had left her body intact from the waist up, but the lower body looked as though it had been through a giant mincer.

Maybe I should tell them? thought Bob, hesitant. He didn’t want to be responsible for any more deaths, but he knew that it was unlikely that Albert or Dave would believe that a sea demon was responsible for the slaughter of Pam Baker and Tommy Waterhouse.

Hoping to escape his responsibility, he asked, “Were there any witnesses?”

“Only young Jessie,” replied Dave.

“My God,” said Bob. He wondered what it must have been like for the girl, not yet three, to see her mother mutilated.

After a moment’s soul-searching, Bob summoned up his courage and said, “Can I speak to you in private, Al? There’s something I need to tell you.”

“About the two murders?”

“Possibly,” conceded Bob, not wanting to tell his story in front of the crowd.


Half an hour later, Bob Dekker sat in a high-backed chair in the small police station in Dunscombe Street. Across the table from him sat Dave Hollander, taking notes as he told his story to Albert Jenkins, who stood beside a grey metal filing cabinet behind the large desk.

“You’re telling us a fish shredded Pam and Tommy?” asked Dave, not bothering to keep the derision out of his voice. “You must be going senile, Bob.”

“Not just a fish,” corrected Bob. “According to Tommy, it’s a sea demon.”

“A sea demon?” asked Dave. “Now I know you’re senile.”

“I know how it sounds,” admitted the old man, trying to ignore Dave’s sarcasm. “Jesus, that’s what I thought too. But look what’s happened to Tommy and Pam. No ordinary fish could do that ... You saw the trail it left in the blood in my store! You saw the hole it chewed through the wall of my bait room.”

“Yes, but...” began Albert. He thought, My God, yes I did ... But this is crazy! No fish could have caused this kind of mutilation. Then he thought, But neither could anything else I can think of either! He made a mental note to try to get a straight answer from the coroner to the question of what the killer could be.

Bob was interviewed by the two policemen for almost three hours. When at last he was allowed to leave, he knew that they hadn’t taken him seriously. At least I’ve done my duty by warning them! he thought. But his conscience told him that he should do more. “But what can I do? I’m an old man of seventy. If I were younger, I could play the hero and try to track it down myself. But how can I at my age?”


Albert Jenkins and Dave Hollander were both ready to knock off for the day when the telephone rang.

“What’s it about?” asked Dave after Albert hung up.

“The latest attack,” said Albert as they hurried out of the police station.

The attack had occurred at Jacobson’s Lake, outside town. However, the victims were now at their home on Rosanna Road. When the policemen arrived, they found old Bob Dekker already there talking to two teenage boys, Doug and Ron O’Farrell, and their father, Sammy.

How the Hell did he get here before us? wondered Albert. Aloud, he asked, “So what’s the story?”

“We were attacked by a shark,” said Doug.

“A shark?” asked Albert, wondering if he had heard right. “You mean over at the Yannan River?”

“No, sergeant, at the lake,” insisted Doug.

“It almost took my left leg off!” insisted Ron. Although the boy wore only swimming briefs and had no visible injuries.

“Are you sure it was a shark?” asked Albert.

Jacobson’s Lake was stocked with fish every two or three winters when the lake flooded and met up with the Yannan River, which in turn led out into the Tasman Sea. But it was unlikely that anything as large as a shark could have made it across from the river to the lake.

“Sure, I’m sure,” insisted Ron, sounding indignant.

“My boys aren’t liars!” insisted Sammy O’Farrell, standing behind the sofa on which Bob Dekker sat with the teenage boys.

They interviewed the two boys for another twenty minutes before Bob and the two policemen finally left.

“Well,” asked Bob as they headed out into the street, “do you believe me now?”

“I believe something is on the loose in Wilhelmina, killing people horribly,” said Albert. “Possibly something which can live both on land and in water ....”

“It’s the sea demon that I reeled in! Tommy Waterhouse was right. You’ve gotta dredge the lake immediately.”

“You’re bloody crazy!” insisted Dave Hollander.

“Dredge the lake?” asked Albert. “Do you have any idea how big a job that would be, or how much it would cost?”

“To Hell with the cost, we can’t just stand back and let kids get eaten alive!”

Albert started to argue the point, then thought, I suppose he’s got a point! It doesn’t matter whether it’s a sea monster or a shark if it starts eating the local kids! He considered his options for a moment before saying:

“All right, I tell you what ... I can’t afford to dredge the whole lake ... But I’ll get Marty Smollett to place a quarantine order on the lake to keep away swimmers.”

“Well ... okay,” said Bob. Although not completely satisfied, he decided that it was better than nothing.


Frank Warner slowly led his small herd of Jersey cattle through the forest, heading toward Jacobson’s lake. The lake was a good three kilometres from his station on the edge of Perry, so Frank was taking it slowly. Beef prices were down as it was, without walking the weight off his cattle.

Frank wasn’t worried about violating the quarantine. Anymore than he was worried about the stories of a shark in the lake. Both were just ploys by Bernie Reichbold and the so-called Pure Water Society, as far as he was concerned. For the last year, they had tried every trick in the book to stop him from watering his herd at Jacobson’s Lake. So, since verbal abuse and threats of legal action hadn’t worked, they had decided to move on to psychological warfare.

But it won’t work, Reichbold! thought Frank. You haven’t been able to scare me off before, and you won’t bloody well scare me off now!

Normally, Frank found the three-kilometre walk tedious. But today he was so lost in his thoughts that he was surprised at how quickly he reached the lake.

Leading his herd through the only clearing on that side large enough to admit them, Frank looked nervously around. How could a bloody shark have got into the lake? Frank thought, trying hard to convince himself.

“Jacko! Sandy!” he called to his two Barb-Kelpies. “Watch over the herd!” he ordered the cattle dogs.

The dogs had been left in charge of the herd most days for the last two years, so he knew that he could trust them not to allow the cattle to wander. But as he left the lakeside, Frank hesitated. Maybe I oughta wait while they drink? he thought. But then he decided, No, they’ll be all right.

After the walk from Perry each day, Frank liked a bit of rest before heading back. He could have rested beneath one of the pine or gum trees that lined the bank of the lake, but he preferred to walk into Wilhelmina to have a few cold beers with Mark and Don Blythe. Each day, he left Jacko and Sandy in charge of the herd while he went round to the Blythes’ Oxford Street home. The two brothers always had a well-stocked refrigerator and were happy to share their beer with an old friend like Frank.


On that occasion, though, he was greeted with, “Frank, what the Hell are you doing here?” by Mark Blythe.

“I always come here for a couple of hours each day,” reminded Frank. He walked into the lounge room carrying a can of Fosters Lager, which he had liberated on his way through the kitchen.

“But not today!” protested Mark. “You can’t leave your herd alone at that bloody lake today!”

“Of course I can,” insisted Frank, walking over to sit on the dirty, yellowing sofa beside Don. “Besides, they aren’t alone, Jacko and Sandy are looking after them.”

“Jack and Sandy aren’t enough!” insisted Mark. “You oughta be there too!”

“Why? There’s never been any problems before with Jack and Sandy.”

“Jacko and Sandy can’t protect them from that snake thing.”

“What snake thing?”

“The one that’s been terrorising Wilhelmina,” insisted Don Blythe.

Seeing that Frank didn’t know what they were talking about, Mark and Don told him what had happened to Tommy Waterhouse, Pamela Baker and the O’Farrell boys.

“But how can snake attacks be related to a shark attack?” demanded Frank.

They argued the point for nearly ten minutes. Finally, Frank gave in and agreed to return to the lakeside with the Blythe brothers.


“I’m sure they’ll be all right,” insisted Frank, as they approached a grove of pine trees a few metres from the water’s edge.

But where he had left a herd of ninety-odd cattle, they only found a dozen or so remaining ... All dead or dying. All badly mutilated.

“Christ, that snake thing has got your whole herd!” cried Mark.

They raced across to the slaughter. The grassy bank of the lake was strewn with blood and entrails for a couple of hundred metres in each direction. Unlike Tommy Waterhouse, who had been reduced to “mince”, large rib bones remained to prove that the sickly, vomit-like mess had once been cattle. Three cows lay dead, only partly consumed, half corpses like Pamela Baker. Two other cows were still alive, lowing mournfully in distress, from horrific injuries to their underbellies and legs. Three unmutilated cows floated, drowned, in the water.

For almost a minute, no one spoke, all three men too stunned to think of anything to say. Finally, Frank Warner said:

“Holy Jesus, what the bloody Hell happened here?”

“The snake,” answered Mark. “That bloody snake thing got your whole herd.”

“Snake, be buggered! It was Bernie Reichbold and his bloody loony friends. Pure Water Society, huh! Pure crap more like it!”

“It was the snake!” insisted Mark.

“How could a bloody snake do this?”

“The herd was panicked and stampeded,” pointed out Don.

He indicated where the grass and mud had been torn up with hoof prints as the herd stampeded into the forest.

“Why the Hell didn’t those two worthless mongrels stop them?” demanded Frank. He started looking around for the two cattle dogs.

“One of them’s over there,” said Don, pointing.

Looking round, Mark and Frank saw the half-devoured corpse of a Barb-Kelpie lying in the mud a few metres from where they stood.


“What the Christ were they doing here in the first place?” demanded Albert Jenkins twenty minutes later. He had been unable to shake off Bob Dekker, who still insisted that a sea demon was responsible, so that they now all stood together gazing at the carnage.

“Watering. I always water my herd at the lake!” reminded Frank.

“Up until today, you did. But in case it slipped your notice, Jacobson’s Lake is currently under a quarantine order!”

They continued to argue the point for a few minutes. Finally, it was Bob Dekker who suggested that Frank Warner and the Blythes follow after the remains of the herd to make certain that they had returned to the Warner station.

Then, reluctantly, Albert Jenkins agreed to start a search of the lake. The local police had no boat of their own; however, they had an agreement with local boat builder and dealer, Barry Pascoe, to rent his four-man runabout when needed.

Forty minutes later, Barry, Albert, Dave, and Bob were in the runabout searching the lake for any sign of the shark, or snake, or sea demon!

They searched the lake for hours without detecting any sign of marine life, and were considering giving up for the day, when Bob Dekker suddenly called:

“Pull up! Pull up quickly!”

“What’s up?” asked Albert Jenkins.

He signalled for Barry Pascoe to kill the motors, then the policeman headed for the rear of the runabout, where Bob was standing, peering into the water.

“I’m not sure; I think I saw something behind the boat.”

“Where?” demanded Albert.

“The old bastard’s going loony?” said Dave Hollander, just loud enough for Bob to hear.

Ignoring the remark, although starting to agree with him, Albert leant over the back of the boat to peer into the lake.

“Hey, look out!” shouted Bob.

Grabbing the policeman by the shoulders, the old man attempted to pull him back up into the boat. As Bob pulled, he felt something pulling back, as though Albert was determined to peer down into the water. For a moment, the policeman’s face did touch the lake, and the water around him began to froth and foam as though it were boiling.

Dave Hollander started shakily toward the back of the runabout, almost turning the boat over, as he went to help pull the sergeant back into the boat.

A split second later, the jaws of the multicoloured fish broke the water where Albert Jenkins’ face had just been.

“Holy Jesus!” cried Dave.

Hearing the cry behind him, Bob thought at first that the constable was simply shocked at the sight of the ugly fish. But hearing Barry Pascoe throwing up over the side of the boat, Bob slowly turned around ....

And stared in shock at the sight of the bleeding mess that had once been Albert Jenkins’ face. Flesh and bone alike had been gnawed away, along with most of the brain matter beneath, leaving the back of his skull looking like a halved gourd with the contents scooped out.

“Oh Christ!” cried Bob as he turned away to throw up into the lake.

Behind him, Bob heard the sound of a falling body and forced himself to look round as the faceless corpse of Albert Jenkins fell over the side with a splash. He saw Dave Hollander lying in a dead faint at the bottom of the boat.

“Holy Jesus, we’ve gotta get him out of the water!” cried Barry Pascoe.

“Leave him,” said Bob, knowing that they would be lucky if any of them got back to shore alive, without stopping to retrieve a corpse.

Seeing the monstrous fish for the first time, Barry asked, “What the Christ is it?”

“That’s what I pulled up out of the lake a few days back. The monster that killed Pam Baker and Tommy Waterhouse.”

“If you pulled it out of the water a few days ago, how the Hell did it get back here?”

“It must have made its way back,” replied Bob, helping Dave Hollander up into a sitting position. “Obviously it can live for days if necessary on dry land, but prefers the water.”

“Bullshit!” said Barry. But as he gazed into the glassy black eyes of the fish, entranced by its unwavering stare, his conviction started to falter.

“Jesus, why doesn’t it drop back into the bloody water?” asked Dave, still sitting in the bottom of the runabout.

Shakily climbing to his feet, he picked up one of the emergency oars and aimed a hard whack at the multicoloured fish ....

Which suddenly moved ....

It pulsed like a beating heart for a second, then suddenly grew in size, so that its head leapt nearly a metre into the air. Its steel-trap-like jaws snapped open and shut, tearing clean through the oar.

“What the Hell?” shouted Dave. Pulled off balance, he dropped the oar into the lake and only just managed to stay in the boat with the help of Barry Pascoe.

However, the boat was rocking wildly from side to side. Bob Dekker had fallen to the bottom of the boat, but Dave and Barry clung to each other for dear life, struggling to keep their footing in the wildly canting vessel.

“Hang on!” shouted Bob. He tried to climb to his knees to crawl toward them.

As soon as Bob started to move, an almost-human grin spread over the fish’s oversized jaws. Then quickly it plunged back under the water.

A second later, there came a resounding crash on the bottom of the boat. “What the bloody Hell...!” shouted Dave as the boat almost overturned.

When a second crash came, Barry Pascoe cried, “That bloody thing is attacking the boat.”

Leaving Dave to his fate, Barry started slowly toward the front of the boat. Before he could reach the controls, however, he heard a scream behind him, followed by a loud splash as Dave Hollander fell overboard.

Looking back, Barry hesitated, unsure whether to start the inboard motor or try to rescue Dave. But as a third crash resounded against the bottom of the boat, the decision was taken out of his hands.

“Let’s get the Hell outta here!” shouted Bob as the jaws of the fish appeared through the bottom of the boat, having crashed right through the fibreglass.

“Oh, Christ!” cried Barry, leaping over the side of the boat.

Bob Dekker was halfway to shore when he heard screaming from behind him. Recognising Barry Pascoe’s voice, Bob hesitated, tempted to return to help him. But knowing that it would only mean his death as well, the old man did his best not to listen to the screaming as he swam on.

His heart was pounding almost loud enough to drown out the screams when Bob finally reached the shore. Aware that the creature could travel on land too, he didn’t stop until he was ten metres up the bank.

Then, while his heartbeat slowly returned to normal, he looked about the grassy bank, expecting to see Dave Hollander. He has to be here somewhere, Bob thought: He was in the water before me.

Yet there was no sign of the constable anywhere on the shore. And no sign of footprints through the thick blanket of pine needles and gum leaves that carpeted the forest floor almost up to the water’s edge. He didn’t want to admit that the policeman hadn’t made it to shore. But Bob started to fear that the constable might have stayed behind to attempt to rescue Barry Pascoe.

Although loath to look at the now quiet lake, Bob forced himself to turn round.

Not knowing what to expect, he was surprised to see the lake looking placid. There was no sign of the remains of Albert Jenkins, Dave Hollander, or Barry Pascoe. The small runabout had already sunk out of sight. The only hint that anything had happened was a large reddish-brown patch, fifteen metres offshore.

Bob was still looking for some sign of the three men when the bloody water began to seethe and froth. Fearing the sea demon was coming after him, Bob turned and ran into the forest.

Driven by terror, Bob was unaware that he had turned away from Wilhelmina to head instead for Perry.

Little more than thirty or forty houses and a general store around five small streets, Perry didn’t have a police station. So Bob rang through to Glen Hartwell to speak to Lawrie Grimes.

As Senior Sergeant of the area, Lawrie had been Albert Jenkins’ immediate superior. So, with the death of both Albert and Dave Hollander, Bob rang through to report to Lawrie.

“A sea demon?” asked Lawrie over the phone.

“Look, I don’t know what it is,” admitted Bob, “but it killed Pam Baker, Tommy Waterhouse, and now Albert, Dave, and Barry.”


Lawrie listened to Bob’s crazy sounding story with astonishment. Albert Jenkins had kept him informed about the Baker and Waterhouse killings, so Lawrie knew that something was going on in Wilhelmina. But a sea demon that chews people into fine paste, he thought, taking notes as Bob related his story.

Finally, Lawrie reluctantly agreed to pick up Bob and drive him back to “Willy” to check out the old man’s report.

It was almost two hours after the attack at Jacobson’s Lake when Lawrie’s blue Ford Fairlane finally entered Wilhelmina along Rosanna Road.

“Everything looks quiet,” said Lawrie, looking up and down the street.

“A little too quiet,” said Bob. “Where is everybody?”

“Inside, having dinner,” suggested Lawrie. However, he was a little awed by the total emptiness of the street.

“Drive around to Chatterton Street,” suggested Bob.

As the main street of town, there were bound to be a few people about, or so they both thought.

Staring at the unsmiling facades of the seemingly empty houses, Bob thought, Why are no lights on? Where is everyone? Surely it can’t have eaten everyone? The town population had been just short of two hundred.

They were almost up to Bob’s general stores when they saw what looked like an oversized pet door in the weatherboard side wall of a house. Smashing a window, they climbed into the house and found the family of three “pureed“ and “painted“ around the walls and ceilings of the house.

In other houses, they found the same thing.

“They can’t all be dead?” insisted Bob, close to hysteria.

“Hopefully not,” agreed Lawrie. “Most of them probably abandoned the town when the slaughter started.”

Altogether, they found the remains of sixty-two people. Another hundred or so turned up at other nearby towns over the next few days, leaving about twenty people unaccounted for.

“But where has it gone now?” asked Bob.

Lawrie rushed to the nearest phone to ring his constable, Terry Blewett, in Glen Hartwell, afraid that the sea demon might have headed in that direction. With a population of over three thousand, Glen Hartwell had the potential for a slaughter many times worse than the one in Wilhelmina.

Lawrie sighed aloud in relief when assured by Terry that everything was all right there. He had hardly hung up, however, when he received a hysterical phone call from Silvana De Pasquale, director of Queen’s Grove sanatorium at nearby Westmoreland.

“What’s up?” asked Bob after Lawrie hung up.

“It was hard to make out what she was saying, but I think the sanatorium is under attack.”

“From the sea demon?”

“Christ only knows.”

Lawrie rang Terry Blewett to get him to meet them there, then he and Bob set out for the sanatorium.


Queen’s Grove was midway between Westmoreland and Glen Hartwell. Originally a private home, the sanatorium was a great rambling, three-storey weatherboard manor house, with iron bars on most of the windows, surrounded by large gardens and high, spiked steel fences.

When Bob and Lawrie arrived, the invasion turned out to be by residents of Westmoreland. Nearly one hundred people had risked injury by climbing the spiked fence to gain entrance to the sanatorium grounds.

While Lawrie went inside to talk to the director, Terry and Bob attempted to calm down the hysterical crowd and to find out what had happened.

They were told that the sea demon had invaded Westmoreland, literally tearing people limb from limb. The survivors did not even have time to pack before abandoning their houses and possessions. They had headed for Queen’s Grove in the hope that the spiked fence would be an impassable barrier to the demon fish.

Keep your fingers crossed! Bob Dekker thought. But after an hour or so, it became obvious that the creature had not followed the fleeing Westmorelandians.

Lawrie Grimes arranged for the most badly injured to receive medical attention, first at the sanatorium, then later at the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital.

Then, after ringing around to the other local police officers, Lawrie and Terry set out for Westmoreland, although it was starting to grow dark.


They found Westmoreland completely abandoned. There were more obvious signs of the recent slaughter than there had been at Wilhelmina. In every street or dirt path, there were both recognisable bodies and the shredded remains of bodies. The streets seemed awash in blood to young Terry Blewett as he gazed out through the car windscreen, although he knew it was an illusion.

Four other police officers and more than a dozen heavily armed civilians had responded to Lawrie’s calls to take part in an armed hunt for the sea demon.

Using small floodlights, they located a deep groove made by the body of the demon as it “swam” through the town, committing its carnage.

They were less than half a kilometre from the Yannan River when they finally caught up with the demon fish.

“Holy Jesus!” said Lawrie Grimes. He stared in amazement at the varicoloured fish “swimming“ along the ground. Until now, he had not believed that the massacres at Wilhelmina and Westmoreland had been done by a fish.

“Watch out!” shouted Bob Dekker as the creature reversed direction, rounding upon them.

As they watched, amazed, the fish began to pulse strangely, and one of the men cried out, “It’s growin’! My God, the bloody thing is growin’!”

In seconds, the monster had expanded from the size of a large trout to that of a Grey Nurse shark. Too shocked to move, the hunters stood frozen to the spot as the land-shark raced toward them. Its flip-top jaws gaped wider than seemed possible as it raced forward.

“Run for it!” shouted one of the hunters, Steven Cassar. But even as he turned to run, the land-shark reached him.

“Help me! God’s sake, help me!” shrieked Cassar as he vanished feet first into the monster’s jaws.

“Oh, my God!” cried one of the hunters, Rodney Mullins. He turned and threw up. Then, straightening again, he shrieked as the fish started toward him.

“Help me, dammit, help me!” shouted Mullins as he turned to try to flee.

The monster overtook him and began noisily crunching on his legs like a ghoul crunching graveyard bones.

“Shoot it, dammit, shoot it!” ordered Lawrie Grimes, finally coming to his senses.

He realised that the creature could kill them all in only minutes if they were slow to act. Even as he spoke, he raised his rifle and started firing into the monster from point-blank range.

Gradually, other hunters came to their senses and began firing toward the grotesquely-coloured beast. But despite the efforts of the hunters, the monster finished off Rod Mullins. Then, it leapt forward again and grabbed Murray Richards, who had been firing into the beast from two or three metres away.

Oh, my God, the bullets aren’t hurting it! Bob Dekker thought. He was shocked by the contemptuous way that the creature had taken the hunter firing into it.

However, despite Bob’s fears, the bullets eventually began to take effect. More and more hunters awakened from their terror-induced trance to begin firing toward the land-shark.

At first, the monster seemed to almost glow with supernatural health. But as dozens, then hundreds of bullets and rounds of buckshot were fired into it, its hellish powers began to fade away. Whereas at first the bullets had made little impact, eventually Bob Dekker saw chips of orange, red, blue, green, black start to flake away from the monster.

After devouring Murray Richards, the creature vomited, spreading a fine spray of red blood and minced entrails across the forest, and across three or four hunters, who stopped firing long enough to throw up themselves.

The creature started forward toward another hunter, who dropped his rifle and ran shrieking back toward the nearest town. Where before the men had had no chance of fleeing, the monster now moved sluggishly, obviously close to death, and the running man easily escaped.

The hunters continued firing on it, and the land-shark threw up a second, then a third time, voiding itself of most of the nourishment it had consumed. Then, unable to maintain its vast size without the blood and tissue it had regurgitated, it began to pulse -- weakly now, like a dying heart -- and slowly shrank back to the size of a large trout.

No longer terrified by the creature, the hunters moved forward en masse and shot the fish to pieces.

“It looks harmless enough now!” said one of the hunters, his face flushed red from excitement at the kill.

“Don’t be too sure,” insisted Bob Dekker. Remembering Tommy Waterhouse’s warning, the old man insisted that the remains of the fish be gathered up and burnt, and then that the ashes be buried well away from the water of the Yannan River.

Wilhelmina and Westmoreland became ghost towns, despite the efforts of Lawrie Grimes and Bob Dekker to convince people that it was safe to return to their homes. In later years, the locals were reluctant to discuss the evacuations of the two towns, and when pressed, would mention a “plague” that had swept through the local area, decimating the two towns.

THE END
© Copyright 2025 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia