KEN Madsen was preparing to put his boat back on its trailer. A family was fishing in a tinny nearby. A crocodile was watching from the opposite bank.

It was a Friday afternoon scene not all that unusual for the remote Proserpine River, Queensland, fishing spot.

But then there was a splash.

And another.

The Sunshine Coast Daily reports Mr Madsen initially thought the lucky family had just caught a fish.

He was right.

Sort of.

“There was an almighty commotion and carry on, and the next thing I hear is ‘help’, ‘help’ and saw the tail end of the shark disappearing into the boat,” he told the regional paper.

“The kids ran up the front of the boat because there wasn’t much room. You could see the seat from the boat floating down the river. The shark had knocked it out when it jumped in.”

Mr Madsen let his own boat slip back into the river, and hurriedly motored over to the dingy-in-distress.

He quickly loaded the two youngest children aboard. They were later reluctant to climb out again after seeing the 2m crocodile on the nearby river bank.

“The kids reckon they’re never going fishing again,” Mr Madsen said.

The family told Channel 7 they had seen the shark jump out of the water some 10m away. No sooner had one of them commented they wouldn't’ want to see it any closer than it leapt into the boat.

“It jumped right out, clean out of the water, into the boat where we are, straight in between my two brothers,” Connor Chapman told Seven.

Mr Madsen said there was no way he and the boys would have been be able to lift the shark back into the river without tipping the tinny over.

The bull shark was some 2.2m long, weighing more than 150kg, he said.

Mr Madsen towed the tinny back to shore where he and two more men dragged the shark out on to a pontoon and back into the river.