The friend of the crocodile attack victim was taken to a local hospital for treatment of an abrasion on her arm that she sustained when the crocodile’s body rubbed against her but is physically well. “There are warning signs everywhere up there”.
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“If you go in swimming at 10 o’clock at night, you’re going to get consumed”, he said.
A woman has reported her friend missing near Cape Tribulation.
“The report that we have from the surviving woman is that they felt a nudge and her partner started to scream and then was dragged into the water.”
Police said the woman, aged in her 40s, was swimming at Thornton Beach at Daintree, north of Cairns, about 10pm.
“They made a decision to take a swim in the ocean just in waist-deep water and at that point, we believe that a crocodile has taken one of the women, taken hold of her”, he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
The beach is remote and secluded, about 125 kilometres north of Cairns by road and needing a ferry trip and an hour and a half drive along windy roads cutting through the rainforest to be reached from Port Douglas in the south.
“She lives in New South Wales and was just up visiting friends”, Rhodes said.
But Warren Enstch, who represents the area in the Australian Parliament, said the beach was beside a creek where tourism operators run crocodile-spotting tours.
The friend says she tried to grab her friend but was unable to pry her from the crocodile’s jaws.
Mr Entsch said he feared the attack might spark a reactive debate about how to manage crocodiles, but people must remember the attack happened inside a national park in an area where visitors are warned about the dangers.
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Five-year-old Jeremy Doble died when he was attacked by a 4.3m crocodile in a swamp behind his Daintree River home.
