A woman fought in vain to pull her friend from the jaws of a crocodile during a late-night swim on a far north Queensland beach.

A 46-year-old woman is feared dead after she and a friend went swimming at Thornton beach in the Daintree national park, north of Cairns.

Police say the women were in waist-deep water when the croc attacked about 10.30pm on Sunday.

“Her 47-year-old friend tried to grab her and drag her to safety but she just wasn’t able to do that,” senior constable Russell Parker told ABC radio on Monday.

The woman’s friend ran to a nearby business to raise the alarm, police said.



Paramedics took the victim’s friend to the Mossman hospital, suffering shock and a graze. A search is under way for the missing woman.

A helicopter searched the area on Sunday night and those efforts were continuing on Monday.

Douglas Shire Mayor Julia Leu lives in the Daintree area, not far from Thornton Beach.

“The community is shocked and saddened by this tragedy,” she said.

“We’ve been through this before and our hearts go out to this woman’s family and we feel very much for her friend, who was with her at the time.”

If fears about the woman’s fate play out, it would be the second fatality involving a crocodile in a fortnight.

On 17 May Noel Ramage, 72, drowned after a crocodile reportedly overturned the boat he and his mate were in while crabbing near Gunn Point, about 40km north-east of Darwin.

The Victorian man was trapped under the capsized tinnie and drowned while his 72-year-old friend hurled spanners and spark plugs at the croc in a desperate bid to keep it at bay.

The friend was trapped in mangroves for three hours before he was rescued.

