Daintree crocs thriving; tourists beware

Jane King used to happily cross the Daintree River alone at night, albeit with her eyes peeled.

But she stopped those solo crossings in her small boat some years back, uneasy about the number and size of crocs in the river.

In the three decades since she moved to the pristine Daintree area, north of Cairns, she's watched the crocodile population rise in dramatic fashion.

Crocs were ruthlessly hunted there until the 1960s, with the population hit so hard that in the 1970s people still felt it was safe to water-ski on the river.

The conservation-minded former journalist dryly observes that efforts to restore the population have been nothing short of a triumph.

"They've been very successfully protected," she tells AAP.

And she's happy about that, for the most part.

So much of the Daintree area's economy depends on crocodiles, as tourists flock there for an up-close and personal experience with these prehistoric-looking beasts.

She laments the presumed loss of a tourist on Sunday - a woman in her 40s who was snatched as she and a friend took a late-night swim at nearby Thornton Beach in the Daintree National Park.

"You don't swim in north Queensland waters, fresh or salt water, at night time," she says.

"The only thing you can hope for with something like this is that it becomes an awareness thing."

Ms King isn't convinced that visitors to the area truly grasp the danger that crocs can pose, despite the best efforts of local tour operators and countless warning signs.

She worries sometimes about the Daintree Village, on the southern bank of the river, where there's ample evidence that tourists aren't always conscious of where they are.

"You see tourists sitting there, with their chairs in the river, fishing," she says.

"I've been abused by young men after telling them they're stupid. But it's the locals who suffer when someone gets taken."

At her mangosteen and taro farm on the northern bank of the river, the dangers that lurk below sometimes burst to the surface in dramatic fashion.

Ms King has three large crocs that call her farm home, including a particularly fetching one named Aggro, whose feminine wiles attract the attentions of competing males.

And when the males are trying to win her over, look out.

Ms King has witnessed some pretty spectacular fights between suitors.

"You hear them and you go down there and there's these crocs rolling around and carrying on. I've had a dog taken from there years ago," she says.

But she says it's the ones you don't see that pose the real danger.

"If I see a croc sitting on the bank I feel much safer. It's the crocodile that you don't see that will get you."

Ms King said national parks must remain the realm of the crocodile, but as the population booms again she wonders what might need to be done in the future to manage risks to people.

She admits to feeling nervous when she does cross the river - in daylight hours - to reach Daintree Village and finds her boat stuck in the mud, forcing her to step over the side into ankle-deep mud to push her boat to what she says are antiquated ramp and jetty facilities.

She worries too about the tourists who in daylight hours still regularly swim at Cow Bay, just to the south of Thornton Beach where the tourist vanished on Sunday night.

But she agrees it's difficult to know where to draw the line when it comes to crocodile management in a place that rides on the reptile's back.

"That's the difficult thing isn't it. Where do you draw the line?"