Coogee shark attack survivor Leah Stewart reveals new details about great white mauling

Shark attack survivor Leah Stewart has revealed terrifying new details about the great white mauling that almost killed her.

Stewart says her heart stopped as she was being rushed from the beach to an ambulance and only discovered that two weeks ago.

The 34-year-old mother was critically injured when she was attacked by a four-metre great white shark while swimming at Coogee Beach on June 13.

Speaking to 2GB’s Ben Fordham on Wednesday morning, Ms Stewart revealed she recently returned to the beach and met with the lifesavers who fought to keep her alive in the moments after the attack.

It was during that visit that she learnt just how close she had come to dying.

“I didn’t know this until two weeks ago, that my heart actually stopped as they were taking me to the ambulance and they were giving me CPR and breathing for me,” she said.

“They were like, ‘How are you speaking? How are you walking? How are you here?’

“They truthfully didn’t think I would make it to the hospital and very nearly I didn’t.”

Ms Stewart suffered catastrophic injuries in the attack and later had her left arm amputated.

She spent weeks critically ill in hospital, was in a coma for 10 days and underwent almost a dozen operations.

While much of the attention has centred on the loss of her arm, Ms Stewart revealed she is also continuing to recover from a severe injury to her leg.

“At the moment, my leg is still open,” she said.

“No one really speaks about my leg, you can’t see it, but it has got a huge bite out of it.”

Despite the long road ahead, Ms Stewart is already looking towards what she wants life to look like once her leg has healed.

“Once my leg is closed, I am locking in,” she said.

“I am going to get stronger, I am going to get better, I am maybe not going in the ocean, but I would love to get back to swimming in a pool.

“If the drones are up and there is a shark net, potentially.”

Ms Stewart said she had been relearning how to tie her hair, fasten buttons and brush her teeth with one hand.

“Every day has its troubles at the moment,” she said.

“(My partner) Fernando does my hair most days and he is not great.

“If you see me with my buttons loose, you know why.

“At the beginning I couldn’t brush my own teeth, but now I can do that.

“I was very excited just this week I made my own coffee.”

Ms Stewart also hopes to eventually return to her job as a primary school teacher and is preparing to visit her students later this week.

She admitted she was nervous about how to explain what had happened to the children, but hoped her experience could ultimately offer them a lesson in resilience.

“It is really hard for me at the moment, what people don’t see is that I have to sleep most of the day or be lying down most of the day,” she said.

“I am still trying to figure out how to approach it with them, because it is a bit of a scary subject.

“I would love to give them some encouragement that you can get through hard things.

“Because for me, this felt impossible.”

Ms Stewart previously detailed the horrifying attack in an interview with 60 Minutes, revealing that thoughts of her young daughter August helped drive her fight for survival.

She recalled swimming towards shore when she heard a scream behind her and turned to see an enormous fin.

“I will never forget its face,” she said.

“It was huge and its teeth and its mouth was massive and its eyes, it’s just black little beady eyes, we were just looking face to face.

“It was a monster.”