Top End - Predator
Friday, August 30, 2013 at 06:37PM Soon as you say you’re going to Darwin, people start joking about crocodiles. Even the taxi driver who took us to Tullamarine told us to be careful and we chuckled. ‘Yeah, the paper there, the NT Times, they love a good croc story,’ said my husband.
It certainly feels a bit lawless up there, a bit Wild West to this soft, sheltered southern city dweller. Bicycle helmets are not compulsory. There’s a 130 k speed limit on the highways; until recently there was none at all. Most unnervingly for a mother who spent many years counting heads nervously around any body of water, no fences around the plethora of swimming pools in this hot place.
We had two nights at Mary River, about half way between Darwin and Kakadu. We checked in, we had a cup of tea, we had a snooze. As soon as the fierce afternoon heat began to wane, we headed off for the ‘River Walk’ – eight k’s of bush track winding along the banks of the Mary River, inland for a bit, back to the river and home to the campsite in a series of big loops. As usual, Al was jogging while I elected for a brisk walk.
It was lonely and wild. The most domesticated things I saw were Brahmin cattle, pale, shadowy, hump-backed shapes in the dusty bush. Tiny wallabies, not much bigger than a hare, delicate and nimble, stared at me and hopped away. For the first half of the walk, the Mary River flowed strong and brown and silent to my right. When there was a break in the scrubby bush I wandered over and peered down the steep bank cautiously.
When I got back to the campsite on the banks of the river an hour later, there was a cop car and an ambulance looking incongruous in the middle of folding chairs, tents and caravans. People in dark blue uniforms looked grave, knots of campers looked stunned, gazing at the river, then at the officials, then back at the river. A little way away from the others, a young man was crying, and a big, bearded bloke had his arm around him.
‘I’m back,’ I called to my husband as I let myself into our cabin. ‘And I think something bad has happened.’ I described the scene at the riverbank campsite to him. ‘Probably someone had a heart attack,’ he reassured, but then I remembered the reason for my extra unease. ‘There was no one on a stretcher,’ I said. ‘And there were press. There were cameramen.’
He was 26, the young man who was taken. It was a thirtieth birthday party with a bunch of friends by the river, and he and his mate decided to swim across. Half way back, the croc got him.
That night, at the ‘Wilderness Retreat’ where we were staying, there were a bunch of reporters as well as ambos and police. The next day the place was crawling with water police as they trawled the river for the body, which they found on Monday morning. The staff at the place were distressed and weary.
We’d booked a boat trip for Monday morning but decided to cancel. Not, as the young woman at the desk suggested, because ‘you don’t know what you might find out there,’ simply because it seemed somehow disrespectful to take a pleasure jaunt down that lethal stretch of water so soon after such a tragedy.
The papers described it as a ‘rogue’ crocodile. Cops and crocodile hunters shot three, to be sure they got their guy.
I cannot begin to understand what the family of the young man must be going through, not to mention the mate he was swimming with when he died. Maybe killing a few crocs gives the families of victims some kind of closure. But in a river known to be full of crocodiles, I can’t help wondering what good that will do. Or what sense it makes to describe the creature as a ‘rogue’. It didn’t leave its natural habitat and start ripping down tents to eat the campers inside. Despite the warnings plastered everywhere in Mary River and, indeed, all over the Northern Territory, these humans decided to do something really dumb. Even boringly sensible me did silly things, especially when I was young. But in this case, can we really blame the crocodile?
Between the 1940s and 1960s, crocodiles in the NT came close to extinction as they were hunted for skins and sport. They have been protected since the early 1970s, and their population has returned to a healthy level.
In the paper the next day was a local calling for a culling, a massacre of crocodiles, so that they would once again know ‘who ruled the planet’. I felt a deep sadness as I read this. Human beings, the ultimate predator, haven’t exactly done a great job of ruling the planet.
I was profoundly shaken by this senseless, tragic loss of life on my doorstep. Once again, I was reminded to respect the land – the bush, the sea, the rivers, to know my place in them.
Reader Comments (2)
What you say rings absolutely true to me although in my neck of the woods it's bears. On our recent hike in Yukon Territory in northern Canada we carried, for the first time in all my years of hiking, bear spray, a concoction of pepper designed to give the bear a blast in the face for about 8 seconds which will, you hope, make the bear turn and run in the other direction. We didn't have to use it, thank heavens, and I hope never to have to use it and to be able to take the stuff to the hazardous waste disposal facility when it has expired. The critters were, indeed, here first. We assume they do what they do by instinct. We are supposed to be the ones who can think and make rational decisions.
Read about it in the paper Clare unaware that you and Al were so close by. Knowing your place in the world and respecting other creatures is wise behaviour. But there is always the random act of violence that can strike you without warning even in the city. Ice and other drugs have made predators of people who can strike without warning in spite of all our precautions and on streets we think are safe. I try to be very aware whenever I'm out in the wilds of Melbourne, especially at night.