Giant Crocodile Traps Tourist on Small Australian Island for 2 Weeks
Never go to Australia. Just one week after a 16-foot-long croc ruined an Aussie's birthday by eating his friend, a New Zealander was rescued from a small Australian island after being trapped there for two weeks by a crocodile he described as “very, very, very large.”
On Saturday, a rescuer found Ryan Blair, 37, on the tiny Governor Island off the coast of Western Australia, where he'd been dropped off several weeks earlier to explore by kayak. After running low on supplies, Blair decided to paddle to a larger island. But before he could get too far, he spotted a giant crocodile.
"He was about four metres away from me and I thought `this is it,'" Blair told Australia's 9 News."It was so close, and if this croc wanted to take me it would not have been an issue."
And it wasn't a one-time run-in; according to Blair, the 18-foot crocodile stalked him for over two weeks, making it impossible to leave the island on his 7-foot kayak. “I was scared for my life - I was hard core praying for God to save me,” he said.
Every day, Blair tried to escape and send signals at passing planes and boats but he had no luck until Saturday, when local resident Don MacLeod spotted a light on the island and went to investigate.
"He was relieved and shocked, and thankful someone had come along because he was running out of options pretty quickly," MacLeod told Australia's ABC News. “He is a very, very lucky man."
Blair was, of course, very thirsty at the time of his rescue, but his first drink aboard MacLeod's boat wasn't water. "We gave him a cold beer, which was probably the wrong thing, and then he went to sleep about three-quarters of the way home," MacLeod said.
