Croc attack like ‘getting smashed’ by truck
He kept coming in to try to get me and I kept giving him grief with the board; it was pretty unreal to see a beast like that that close.
The victim of a crocodile attack has told how he shoved his finger into the 2.5-metre reptile’s eye in a desperate bid to free himself from its thrashing jaws.
Chris Keeping, 29, compared the attack with ‘‘getting smashed by a Mack truck’’ and says he did not expect to survive.
‘‘He shook me around for a bit and when he stopped all I could see was a massive snout and a crocodile with his teeth in me,’’ he told ABC radio.
He was kitesurfing at Lee Point in Darwin on Saturday morning for about two hours when the wind dropped off about 100 metres from shore and his kite folded down on itself, tangling him up.
‘‘On my right hand side this figure came sliding up; I didn’t see him til the last moment, and then just a massive bang. He smashed me like a Mack truck.’’
In ‘‘sheer panic’’, Keeping went limp in the croc’s mouth, as it had his right arm and shoulder pinned.
‘‘I thought in the split second: ‘I’m out in the middle of the ocean, there’s no one around, I think this is it . . . I don’t think I’ve got a chance against this bastard’.’’
With his free arm, Keeping poked the crocodile in the eye.
‘‘Growing up in the Territory what I’ve learned, everyone sticks their finger in a croc’s eye, so I thought I’d go for gold, got my index finger and shoved it as hard as I could right into his eye socket.’’
The crocodile let him go but then came at him again and again, as Keeping used his board to hit it as hard as he could across its snout while paddling back towards shore.
‘‘I never thought in the world I’d get back to the beach, I thought ‘he’s going to nail me from the side or he’s going to get underneath me and pull me under’.
‘‘He kept coming in to try to get me and I kept giving him grief with the board; it was pretty unreal to see a beast like that that close.’’
He made it back to the beach and the crocodile disappeared beneath the water.
He was treated in hospital for lacerations and puncture wounds.
If he had not been wearing a stinger suit, he said, ‘‘he would have just ripped me to pieces’’.
Keeping agreed he was very lucky with his close call, and said he would keep kite-surfing, but not at Lee Point.
Chris Keeping