SYDNEY: An Australian diver who wrestled with a 3.5-metre great white shark off a Perth beach at the weekend has told his tale of survival against incredible odds.

"I got whacked, like I was hit by a car, and was dragged along and shook up a little bit, and that's when it punctured my arm," Bernard Williams said yesterday. "It was a lot longer than me, and it would have been half a metre across the head with a lot of teeth."

The 47-year-old father of three told The Australian from his hospital bed that in the battle on Sunday he was temporarily blinded by clouds of his own blood.

"The first I saw of it was when I was looking at my elbow and wondering what was hanging off it and seeing this big head inches away from it," he said.

Williams, who has dived for fun for 20 years, said he wasn't sure whether he shook the shark off or whether it let go to get a better hold.

"It was like jabbing a lump of steel," he said, "but then I kept losing that much blood in the water that I kept losing sight of it.

"I had a perfect view of it when it came at me the second time, and across its head would have (measured) three or four hundred millimetres," he said.

Williams was brought ashore by surf lifesavers after a nearby boat saw the attacking shark and raised the alarm.

He has deep gashes to his arm but was expected to be released from hospital soon.

The lucky escape came a week after a 21-year-old Brisbane woman died on North Stradbrook Island in Queensland after having both her arms ripped off by a shark. She was in waist-deep water when she was seized.

Williams was 5 kilometres off Perth's City Beach when the shark attacked.

There have been three shark fatalities on Australia's west coast in the past five years.

In 2000, Perth lawyer Ken Crew, 49, died after losing a leg to what was believed to be a great white on Cottesloe Beach. In 2004, Brad Smith, 30, died after being attacked by a shark while surfing at Gracetown, 270 kilometres south of Perth. In March 26-year-old Geoffrey Brazier was mauled to death by a 6-metre shark while snorkelling off the Abrolhos Islands.

Source: China Daily