Residents left baffled by shark in Sydney street

Residents of Summer Hill in Sydney’s inner west were left baffled this weekend after spotting a small shark laying helpless on the street on Friday, so far from its ocean home.

While the exact species isn’t known, people on social media suggested it might be a gummy, dusky or bronze whale shark, as they ponder how the animal ended up in the residential area to begin with.

Many suggested the shark, which appears to be a juvenile, could have gotten lost and ended up in the Inner West waterways, before somehow making its way onto the street.

Flash-flooding has occurred across Australia's east coast this week. Several people have been trapped in floodwaters including four people in Queensland who lost their life.

The heavy downpour of rain on the east coast could have caused the nearby Hawthorne canal to overflow, some claimed, sending the water, and the animals in it, rushing down the street.

Locals looking for answers

When a photo of the shark was shared on Reddit, speculation grew around its legitimacy with some saying it had to be a joke. But others on various social media platforms swore it wasn’t.

“Not taking the p***, this happened in Summer Hill this afternoon,” one said.

“Someone on my local suburb Facebook just posted a photo of a shark stranded in the street by the railway station,” one person wrote alongside a photo of the shark laying by the gutter.

Locals say the shark appeared on Grosvenor Street near Summer Hill train station Friday afternoon and suggest the recent weather must have had something to do it.

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“It was seriously bucketing with rain and the streets looked liked rivers at 3pm but a shark,” one woman wrote on Twitter.

“It must have got washed up into the canal which flooded out onto the road. A win for how clean Iron Cove Bay must be to have sharks in it.”

“Assuming this is real, I'm guessing this is probably down around the Cooks River part of Marrickville as that does tend to flood during heavy rain and has in fact done so already this week,” another said.

While it seems a reasonable explanation locals were still questioning the baffling find.

“Not waterfront, and, you know, on a hill,” one said.

“Sharknado is real,” joked another referring to the movie which saw man-eating sharks take over the city of Los Angeles.

Prank or otherwise, the mystery of how the animal ended up there has generated plenty of debate.

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