Wallagoot Beach, Australia - An Australian surfer's run-in sounds more like something out of a movie script than reality: a school of dolphins and an airplane's crash landing helped him avoid a 20-foot shark's attack.

Bill Ballard was surfing at Wallagoot Beach in New South Wales, Australia, late last month when he spotted a school of dolphins eating some salmon nearby.

As Ballard approached the dolphins, they started acting strangely. The animals began swimming toward and away from him - over and over again.

"It's hard to describe, but they kept coming up to the surface to look at me and also began swimming back and forward, coming closer and trying to push me towards the shore," he told The Courier.

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The experienced surfer then saw another large shadow in the water, which he at first thought was another dolphin.

However, he was quickly proven wrong when a small plane suddenly approached the surface of the water.

"Shark, shark!" two of the plane's passengers shouted down to him.

In its attempt to alert Ballard to the danger, the small aircraft flew too close to the water's surface. The pilot was unable to pull the plane back up in time, and crashed into the water near the beach.

Carried by the next wave, the surfer managed to get to the shore and rushed to the aid of the plane's passengers, both of whom were only slightly injured.

The pilot said that they spotted the shark lurking in the water nearby from overhead and that was the largest they had ever seen – around 20 feet long, they guessed.

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Ballard concluded that the dolphins, and the plane passengers, definitely saved his life.

"I am so thankful. They were like guardian angels coming to save me," he said.

Experts believe that rather than necessarily attempting to save the surfer from the shark, the dolphins may have seen him as a competitor for food – and were attempting to push him out of the way of their fishy meal.