What's in a name - who was Kitty Whyte?

It is a rare honour for two monuments to commemorate one person, but that’s the case for Brighton’s Kitty Whyte - a woman devoted to keeping others safe at sea but whose own life was tragically cut short not far from where she once lived.

On the bustling Brighton Esplanade, next to the Brighton Jetty, sits a sculpture of a woman swimming with two children. Nearby, there’s a stone fountain also bearing her name.

Both are memorials for Kathleen “Kitty” Whyte - the woman who unwittingly made history by becoming South Australia’s first recorded death from a shark attack.

Born Kathleen Macully, she was a mum of two young daughters who were holidaying at her family’s home in Brighton. She lived with her husband, Ernest Primrose Whyte, on a sheep station in the mid-north.

Kitty was an accomplished swimming instructor who had received a Royal Life Saving Society award for rescuing a drowning woman in 1919 – just one of many people she had rescued.

On 18 March 1926, Kitty, aged 35, had just finished teaching one of her regular swimming classes for local children at Brighton Jetty when she decided to take a dip herself.

She was reportedly 30m from the jetty when she was savagely bitten by a shark. Her own children – aged six months and two years old – were on the jetty with a nurse and witnessed the horrible ordeal.

Adelaide’s The Register newspaper reported there was a scream and cries of “a shark, a shark” as Kitty struggled in the water. Despite being taken ashore by two men in a dinghy, and then to hospital, she died from her injuries.

Kitty’s family lived nearby in a grand house – namely Dunluce Castle. Her father, Reverend Alexander Macully, built the stately home on five hectares of land on what is now Yester Avenue, Brighton.

Dunluce’s current owners, Sarah and Grant Tinney, run tours at the historic property and say that despite their wealthy upbringing, Kitty and her sisters were “very much a roll your sleeves up and help out at charities, nursing, community fundraisers type of girls”.

“They had a strong arts background, and yet they were practical. They were definitely not conventional,” Mr Tinney said.

“I believe Kitty’s early life was filled with significant travel and uprooting, much like a military family.”

True to her adventurous spirit, at just 26 years old, Kitty joined botanist and artist Emily Pelloe on a four-week “holiday” – just the two of them on an 850km horseback ride from Perth to WA’s southwest tip of Cape Leeuwin.

Today, her memory lives on with thousands of beachgoers passing the tributes to her at Brighton Jetty - the sculpture by Gerry McMahon of Kitty swimming with children which was purchased by Council in 2011 and the granite drinking fountain which is dedicated as a “tribute to a noble woman” by The Women of Brighton. Kitty is buried in the family plot at St Jude’s Cemetery, Brighton.

The story of Dunluce Castle

Kitty’s father, Rev Macully, made and lost a fortune building mansions and owning properties in Melbourne – before being declared bankrupt in 1898. He moved to Adelaide with his family in 1902, and in 1912, Dunluce Castle was built as the family’s new home – just a stone’s throw from St Jude’s Church, where he was the rector.

The grand design is based on a wing of Dunluce Castle in Antrim, Northern Ireland and incorporates a castellated round corner tower. The original estate of five hectares included a stable and coach house. The house sits prominently on sand dunes and would once have had a 360-degree view of Brighton to the sea and across the Adelaide Plains.

Learn more and see Dunluce in real life on a self-guided walking tour of historic Brighton. You’ll also pass the memorials to Kitty Whyte and see her final resting place at St Jude’s Cemetery, which itself dates back to 1854.