Former Collie resident Jan Munday did just that last week as she was kayaking down the Ashburton River near Onslow.

Every year Jan and her husband Phil head up to Onslow for a three-month trip, but this year the trip was one she will not forget too soon.

Talking to the Collie Mail this week, Jan said she was paddling down the river last Sunday and noticed something was scaring some ducks near the banks.

She decided to turn around and paddle in the other direction when something caught her eye in the water.

Jan said she thought she was imagining things but headed to shore anyway.

Paddling towards the bank, she had to manoeuvre her way around a tree to reach shore, but as she looked up the steep bank of the river she found herself staring straight into the eyes of the massive reptile.

“It was just sitting there eyeballing me,” she said.

Jan said the bank was quite steep – about 1.5 metres above the water level – which meant the crocodile was sitting higher than her.

She panicked and frantically began trying to paddle away from the bank and around the tree to get to the other side.

She said at first the crocodile did not move, but as she paddled to safety, it slid into the water and out of sight.

The banks on the other side of the river were too steep to climb but Jan noticed one bit of spillway she would be able to climb up.

She made it to the bank and jumped out of her kayak to climb the bank, but she sank up to her knees in the wet mud.

She pulled her kayak behind her for protection, as she did not know where the crocodile was or if it was coming for her, and tried to scramble up the bank.

“I could see footprints and marks where the crocodile had obviously been before,” she said.

“When I finally got to the top I was hysterical.”

When Jan got to the top of the bank she had to run through thick snake-infested grass to reach the road.

“Looking back now I remember thinking that I had to keep my shoes when I was stuck in the mud because I knew there was thick scrub over the bank,” she said.

Jan managed to run to the road and flag a car down to take her back to her campsite.

“By the next day there were stories as big as Ben Hur going around town – some that I was hospitalised and everything,” she said.

The local police heard the story and decided to take Jan back out into the water on a boat, because they said she would never have gone back in the water otherwise.

“They reckon it was 16-feet long,” she said.

Jan said she and her husband always sat out next to the water, but from now on they would go inside at night, just to be sure.