Horror on the harbour

Eyewitnesses are still haunted by the Australia Day shark attack

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When he was sailing on Middle Harbour on the Monday of the Australia Day long weekend in 1963, teenager Denis Byrne never imagined that, just hours later, he would be involved in one of the most horrific episodes in Sydney history.

Denis was 15 years old and had just come ashore when there was a commotion at Castlecrag Boatshed. Word went out that a woman had been viciously attacked by a shark and was being brought by boat to the shed, where an ambulance was waiting.

"That's a day I will never forget and, while the shark attack was horrible, what happened next was just so tragic," Denis, now 75, tells Woman's Day on the 60th anniversary of the ordeal.

The woman was well-known Sydney actress Marcia Hathaway, 32, who had worked on stage and radio, and in the film The Shadow of the Boomerang. She had been spending the public holiday with her fiance, Frederick Knight, and friends aboard the cabin cruiser Valeeta in the waters of Sugarloaf Bay.

It was a beautiful day in the sun and Marcia and Frederick were wading in knee-deep water just metres from the shore when she was grabbed by a "monster" bull shark and dragged under.