Watch out for the nippers

When you're on holiday the role of a crab is usually that of unwanted toe-nipper or child-terrifier.

But in the Terranora Inlet, near the New South Wales town of Tweed Heads, the crabs are the main attraction.

Not that there aren't plenty of other interesting things to see on the Catch-a-Crab cruises. Graceful ospreys, kites and sea eagles, absurd-looking pelicans and swooping seagulls flutter around the mangroves, vying for attention and titbits of food.

Bread pieces thrown by our passengers to shoals of silver bream were intercepted by pelicans and gulls. And it's not just bread they're interested in.

Skipper Jason tossed a dead mullet into the water and emitted a distinctive whistle aimed at a hovering brahminy kite.

The colourful bird dived to within millimetres of the water, seized the fish in its beak and flew off into the mangroves, pursued by envious pelicans.

Other pelicans were happy to play "chicken" immediately in front of the boat where they were fed a snack of pilchards.

The avian villains of the area, black crows which raid the nests of other species for eggs, kept their distance.

Our 44-seat boat was the smaller of two cruisers operated by the Catch-a-Crab company on the Tweed River and associated inlets near the NSW-Queensland border.

Passing scenery includes mangroves, an oyster farm, a small crane with an osprey nest on top, beautiful riverside homes and mountains in the distance.

The mangrove islands where fish and crustaceans breed are protected national parks.

The trip where you actually catch crabs leaves the Dry Dock jetty at 9am daily "Queensland time."

Half-a-dozen crab traps set the day before in Terranora Inlet are hauled ashore by passengers pulling ropes, and on this day produced between zero and three mud crabs.

They're lured into the cage traps by objects such as dead mullet, old chicken scraps or pigs' trotters. "Anything nice and smelly," said Jason.

He showed us how to tie up the crabs with cord to stop them attacking each other - they are cannibals, he explained - and to make them easier to handle.

The largest crab caught in the Tweed weighed in at a whopping 3.85kg - not far short of the record of 4.02kg - and they sure have big nippers.

Passengers can also step off the stern of the boat into the water and use plastic pipes to pump yabbies from the muddy sand below. The shrimp-like yabbies are used for bait when the passengers are given rods to try to catch river fish above the minimum-length limit. Alas, we caught only undersized returnable ones.

The half day trip ends with a lunch of crab and salad. Oysters at $9.98 a dozen are an optional extra.

Catch-a-Crab tours of about three hours operate daily at 9am Queensland time or 10am NSW time during daylight saving. Cost for the cruise alone is A$55 for adults and A$A33 for children.

- AAP