7. George Coulthard’s shark attack changes history.
George Coulthard, who was born in 1856, found fame as a key member of the Melbourne-based Carlton Football Club side that dominated Australia’s national sport in the 1870s and 80s. He was also a founding member of the Victorian Football Association (VFA), making him a key figure in the sport’s development. Most notably, he developed the idea of Australia’s states competing against one another in a national competition, a format that endures to this day. It was while he was busy promoting Australia Rules Football that Coulthard’s famous shark encounter happened.
In the spring of 1877, Coulthard was in Sydney. Soon after arriving in the city, he and his colleagues were taken on a fishing trip in Sydney Harbour. The party was anchored off Shark Island (which should have been warning enough) and Coulthard was sitting at the edge of the boat, his coattails dangling in the water. All of a sudden, a shark grabbed his coat and pulled him under the water. Eyewitnesses describe how Coulthard kicked the “monster shark, 13 feet long” and then managed to “somersault” back into the boat to safety.
According to the accounts of the time, Coulthard’s heroics that day remain “one of the most marvelous escapes from a fearful death on record” and “probably without parallel in Australian waters. Notably, the shark encounter also had a wider impact. After his fright, Coulthard resolved to return to Melbourne as quickly as possible. The trip was cancelled, and the party from Victoria never did manage to introduce Australia Rules Football to Sydney – and to this day, rugby remains the more popular sport in the city.