Aussie fisherman spots massive crocodile in 'little puddle'
Riley McCormack said he knew there were crocs in the area, but was not expecting this 'big fella'.
A “typical” weekend away for an Aussie fisherman and his mates has led to an incredibly up-close and personal encounter with the country’s infamous wildlife.
With their rods in hand and backpacks on, footage filmed by Riley McCormack shows the group walking near a billabong in a remote area of the Northern Territory before suddenly stopping dead in their tracks.
“Holy s**t,” someone can be heard saying as one of the fishermen points out a large crocodile in the water just a few metres from where they were standing.
A stunned Mr McCormack then inches closer to the beast as it slides through a narrow tributary while showing off its prominent scales.
“Were we gonna walk through that?” a member of the group asks as the crocodile is seen enjoying the billabong. “Yep,” another quickly responds.
“Holy f***, we would not have seen it,” one says.
'Didn't expect that big fella'
The friends, who enjoy exploring new waterways in remote parts of the territory, were heading to a fishing spot a few hours east of Darwin when they encountered the massive crocodile, Mr McCormack told Yahoo News Australia.
“We knew there were crocs in the billabong we were going to but definitely didn’t expect that big fella, especially in the little puddle we found it in,” he said.
With populations on the rise, the young fisherman said the predators are a “regular encounter in the Top End and especially in the remote billabongs” they visit where the crocs “don’t see many humans at all”.
NT a 'place unlike anywhere else'
Mr McCormack said that although he filmed the video last year, he recently posted it on TikTok because he “thought it’d be cool to show the world some of the things we get up to in the territory”.
“It is definitely a very wild place and you don’t have to travel very far at all to have mind-blowing experiences — it’s a place unlike anywhere else,” he added.
In his TikTok caption, the fisherman joked that he “nearly stood on a lizard” — horrifying some viewers who noted how lucky they were. “That’s a big boy,” one person wrote, while another joked that the mates should have “run for the hills”.
Others praised the “amazing” experience but urged people to be safe – a message local wildlife authorities are at pains to convey.
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