A missing man is now feared to have been eaten by crocodiles after a pair of flip-flops were found on the riverbank.
Kevin Darmody, 65, was fishing for barramundi on the Kennedy River in the far north of Queensland, Australia when he suddenly vanished from the riverbank on Saturday.
Nearby campers and fishermen say they heard splashes and “a commotion”, then later said, "his thongs [Australian word for flip-flops] were left on the bank."
Bart Harrison said a friend of his was close to the place where Mr Darmody vanished.
“A lad came up on the road shouting ‘he’s gone, he’s gone’ and my mate ran down the bank, and said the water was all stirred up and dirty, you could see something bad happened,” he said.
Mr Harrison said it was common to see "a heap of big crocs" in the area.
"Close encounters are really common, they're everywhere this time of year... they are breeding and get territorial," he said.
Police and rangers have been searching the area around where the fisherman vanished and said the area is “known croc country and known to contain large crocodiles”.
Today they seized and killed two crocodiles, including a 4.1m monster, and will carry out necropsies in the hope of uncovering the pensioner's remains.
“Under the Queensland Crocodile Management Plan, problem crocodiles are removed from the wild", they said.
Mr Darmody ran a pub called the Peninsula Hotel in the tiny, remote town of Laura in the far north of Queensland, about 50 miles from the spot where he disappeared.
One Facebook post from 2015 shows a series of pictures of him crocodile mauling and fishing. Friends say he had a deep knowledge of fishing in dangerous waters and was aware of the risks.
"He wasn't a tourist or a visitor to Cape York, he is or was a local he knew the dangers, just bloody bad luck - in a split second you can be taken by a croc", wrote one friend on social media.
Another said: "This happened to an extremely croc-aware person so stay away from the water’s edges and don’t take anything for granted."
