One of the emergency doctors who arrived at Port Macquarie's Lighthouse Beach minutes after Toby Begg was attacked by a shark has described his timing as "serendipitous".
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Kurt Durbridge has been a doctor for seven years and has been working as an emergency doctor in Port Macquarie for five of those years.
He was due for a shift at work on the afternoon of August 25, but had spent the morning organising his two kids and dropping them off at school.
"I had even gone for a haircut right before [going to the beach]," he said.
"I just got ready [for a surf] like usual, as I have so many times in the past.
"I was just walking down to the beach surveying where the best place to go out would be."
Dr Durbridge had parked his car near the cafe "Coast" at Lighthouse Beach and was making his way onto the beach with his surfboard under his arm and wetsuit on ,when he noticed a group of people huddled together near the water's edge at Watonga Rocks.
"I noticed a bunch of surfers all coming to shore at once, which is quite odd, and that's when I thought something might be going on," he said.
Dr Durbridge didn't know it yet, but Port Macquarie surfer Toby Begg, 44, had been out in the surf when he was attacked by a great white shark. He fought off the shark before swimming back to shore with critical injuries.
"I was told by a woman running past that there had been a shark attack and I asked if everyone was okay," Dr Durbridge said.
"The surfers let me know that that was not the case and at that point I threw my board down and sprinted down the beach to the water."
Dr Durbridge sprung into action when he reached the group of surfers surrounding Toby on the sand.
"The priority was to control the bleeding, get help and do whatever we can to help Toby," he said.
"Luckily, one of my colleagues was also there and he had taken his leg-rope off to apply a tourniquet."
The group on the beach helped fasten the tourniquet as Toby was dragged up the sand and away from the water edge.
"I asked other surfers to grab another leg-rope to put on his other leg and then asked a passerby to go up to the dunes to grab some sticks in case we needed to really tighten the tourniquets.
"Toby was so unwell and his blood pressure was so low that we didn't need to use the sticks to add the extra pressure."
Dr Durbridge said it felt "like forever" until paramedics arrived on scene, but in reality it was no longer than about 10 minutes.
He said the chance of him arriving at the beach only minutes after the attack is "surreal".
"There were so many reasons [for me to] either have already been in the surf or potentially late getting to the beach when everything happened," he said.
Everyone Dr Durbridge has spoken to, who is either close to Toby or was on the beach when it happened, has told him it could have turned out differently.
"You just keep playing out the events of that morning over and over again... I could have been five minutes earlier or five minutes later," he said.
"It's quite profoundly affected me thinking about it."
Community rallies behind Toby
Hunter New England Health has confirmed Toby remains in a stable condition in John Hunter Hospital.
A GoFundMe appeal set up to help Toby, his wife Tracy and their two young children has now reached over $86,400.
The GoFundMe is administered by Toby's brother-in-law, with all of the funds going "directly to Tracy and Toby to put towards medical bills and life without his income ."
The fundraising page can be found here.
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