"On my right hand side this figure came sliding up; I didn't see him til the last moment, and then just a massive bang. He smashed me like a Mack truck."
In "sheer panic", Mr Keeping went limp in the croc's mouth, as it had his right arm and shoulder pinned.
"I thought in the split second: 'I'm out in the middle of the ocean, there's no one around, I think this is it ... I don't think I've got a chance against this bastard'."
With his free arm, Mr Keeping poked the 2.5 metre crocodile in the eye.
"Growing up in the Territory what I've learned, everyone sticks their finger in a croc's eye, so I thought I'd go for gold, got my index finger and shoved it as hard as I could right into his eye socket," he said.
The crocodile let him go but then came at him again and again, as Mr Keeping used his board to hit it as hard as he could across its snout while paddling back towards shore.
"I never thought in the world I'd get back to the beach, I thought 'he's going to nail me from the side or he's going to get underneath me and pull me under'," he said.
"He kept coming in to try to get me and I kept giving him grief with the board; it was pretty unreal to see a beast like that that close."
He made it back to the beach and the crocodile disappeared beneath the water.
Mr Keeping called his sister to take him to hospital, where he was treated for lacerations across his arm, and cuts and small puncture wounds on his back.
If he hadn't been wearing a stinger suit, he said, "he would have just ripped me to pieces".
Mr Keeping agreed he was very lucky with his close call, and said he would keep kite-surfing, but not at Lee Point.
- AAP
