Australian stockman tells of crocodile ordeal

A stockman has told how he spent a week stuck up a tree in remote north Queensland bushland, as hungry crocodiles waited below.

David George, 53, set out from his Silver Plains cattle station, near Coen in far north Queensland, on August 1 to conduct a routine burn-off.

The horse he was riding stumbled in rough terrain, police said, knocking Mr George unconscious.

The stockman managed to stay on the horse's back, and after coming to, realised the horse had led him into croc-infested swampland.

"I had to get off the horse and fall on the long eight foot high 2.5 metre) swamp grass to clear a path, when I fell straight into a crocodile nest," Mr George told The Courier-Mail newspaper.

"That spooked me.

"There were some monstrous tracks and the big ones are never far from the nest."

He scrambled up a nearby tree, where, bloody from the fall and with only two sandwiches to eat, the cattleman spent the next seven days.

"Every night I was stalked by two crocs who would sit at the bottom of the tree staring up at me," Mr George said.