The Last Crocodile Hunter

by Bob Irwin

  He loved the water so he’d go mental whenever you put the hose near him, and this day was no different: he kicked his legs, jumped up and down, rolled over on his back, and did all sorts of other crazy emu things while I was trying to hold onto him. Once I’d finished cleaning him off, I set about cleaning the rest of the dried paint off everything else.

  Egg Head used to regularly escape from the park. He and his emu friend would somehow scale the eight-foot-high fence, complete with three strands of barbed wire at the top. I wouldn’t know about it until I got a phone call from someone in the local area, saying, ‘I just saw your emus wandering along the railway line again.’ I’d roll my eyes and start up the truck. Sure enough, there would be Egg Head and his offsider, just going for a walk.

  Luckily, he wasn’t difficult to catch. He’d come up to me and I’d push him down towards the ground so that he’d fold his long legs beneath him, and then I’d get my arms underneath him to pick him up and carry him home. It must have been an unusual sight. But even with all of the headaches he caused, I had quite a soft spot for old Egg Head.

  Steve wasn’t a huge fan of Brolly, on the other hand, because she’d always pinch his marbles. He’d have his game set up in the yard and the next thing Brolly would wander over and casually swallow them all. He’d have to wait till she’d excreted them before he could collect them, wash them off and play again. In the wild, brolgas live in large family flocks of up to one hundred birds, so the sibling rivalry between Steve and Brolly was the natural extension of her need to claim her territory, which happened to be in all the places he liked to play. But Brolly had a bit of an advantage over Steve: her extremely long and sharp beak. One day she pecked a massive hole in his head, knocking him unconscious, because he hadn’t respected her space.

  But he used to love dancing with Brolly. It was quite a sight to see the pair of them dancing out in the yard. The brolgas’ dance is very graceful; they usually do it in pairs as a mating ritual. She’d jump almost a metre into the air, stretching her wings and extending her neck up, then bow to him and start strutting around. Steve would get Brolly started: he would dance, and then she’d join in. I wouldn’t exactly call Steve’s dancing graceful but I never got tired of watching Brolly.

  Brolgas are monogamous in the wild, choosing a mate for life. I never knew for sure if Brolly considered Steve her boyfriend, or just her dance recital partner. If it was a romantic crush for Brolly, some of their set-tos could certainly be explained as lovers’ tiffs.

  ***

  If you took Steve out in the bush, the hardest job for the whole trip would be to keep an eye on him. The only truly successful way, which I never tried, would have been to tie him to the truck or to put a leash on him.

  ‘Can I catch it, Dad?’ Steve asked me hopefully on a day trip to some bush near Kenilworth. Steve had spied a lace monitor, more commonly known as a goanna. They’re a pretty impressive sight. The second largest of the Australian monitors, they can grow to just over two metres in length. This fella was wandering around in the dry scrub, flicking out his forked tongue to detect traces of prey nearby. Lace monitors are the only lizards equipped with a forked tongue like a snake. I knew it wouldn’t have been much use to refuse Steve an opportunity like that; he was like a bull at a gate as soon as he caught sight of him.

  ‘Yeah, sure!’ I said, and he raced off after this goanna, which in turn ran effortlessly up a really tall tree. Goannas’ exceptionally long claws are perfectly designed for their tree-dwelling lifestyle. Steve, of course, was right behind it, up the tree like a rocket. That kid could climb like a monkey. He disappeared up into the boughs and I waited at the base of the tree, pretty sure how things would pan out. The next thing I knew, droplets of blood came dripping down the tree, right in front of where I was standing.

  ‘At least you’ve got him!’ I called out to Steve, knowing full well that it was in fact the goanna who had Steve.

  ‘I can’t get it off,’ Steve yelled, in pain. It had his hand in its razor-sharp teeth. Goannas’ teeth curve backwards, making it very hard for their prey to escape.

  ‘Well, you’re going to have to bring it down. I’ll get it off you when you get back down here. But don’t pull away, ’cause those teeth’ll cut like razor blades and you’ll need a lot of stitches.’ Privately, I wondered how he was going to manage climbing back down the tree with a whole goanna still attached.

  I wasn’t too worried, but I knew what he was going through because I’d been bitten by quite a few goannas over the years, through no fault but my own, and it’s reasonably painful. If he could get back down and convince the goanna to let go, he’d finish up with quite a few painful holes in his hand and a bit of swelling from bacteria in its saliva, but otherwise none the worse.

  He finally managed to climb down one-handed, but this goanna had a really good hold of his hand and wouldn’t let up easily. I finally managed to get its jaws apart and Steve’s hand out. I cleaned up the wound a bit; the goanna had made quite a mess. I was surprised and impressed that the entire way down the tree, with this thing attached to him, he’d never complained once. It would have been hurting like hell.

  But he’d listened to what I’d told him and done the right thing. It was a good lesson for him: when it comes to working with animals, you have to learn what you can do, and what you can’t do, and that if you make a mistake then you’re going to have to suffer the consequences.

  Some of those trips with him were a nightmare because I’d only have to stop the truck somewhere and he’d be gone, disappearing outta sight. And so I made a point of sitting him down and making him learn how to survive in the bush, how to orienteer by himself—all of those things the Indigenous people of this land knew by instinct. These were vital life skills to have in the bush. ‘If you ever get lost out there and you come across a gully or a creek, follow that body of water downstream and you’ll always come out somewhere accessible,’ I said to him one day, knowing that sooner or later his wandering would mean he’d have to put this advice into practice.

  On one of our family holidays, Lyn, Steve and I were touring the rainforest-scattered Atherton Tablelands in Far North Queensland. It’s an elevated region of the Great Dividing Range with many wildlife species endemic to the area, including the elusive Lumholtz tree-kangaroo and the golden bower bird. We pulled up at this stunning little spot with a creek running through it. No sooner had we arrived when Steve wandered off, as he always did. But when we decided it was time to go, we couldn’t find him anywhere.

  ‘Steve, we’re leaving!’ I called out. No response. For hours I walked the length of the creek searching for him, calling his name. The thick canopy made it almost impossible to make out the position of the sun. The further we walked, the denser the rainforest became and it was beginning to get dark. Then Lyn and I became really concerned.

  ‘We should find access to the creek further downstream and wait for him there,’ I suggested to Lyn, trying to reassure her despite my own trepidation.

  We walked back out to the road until we found another little bush track that wound back to the creek downstream. Then we waited. And waited. And after a disconcertingly long time, a very panicked Steve emerged from the rainforest. He was an absolute mess. Not from crying, but he had been ripped to pieces by the prickly hooks of the wait-a-while vine as he’d struggled through the undergrowth.

  ‘You did really well,’ I said, patting him on the back as Lyn fussed about tending to his scratches.

  He didn’t get into trouble for that. In fact, I spent a fair amount of time telling him what a good job he’d done, because he’d listened to the advice I’d given him about following the creek and working his way out of the situation all by himself.

  At this time I thanked God that I was still young and fit enough to keep up with him. Otherwise I’m sure he would have been left out there, wandering around, on any one of our field trips. But, still, it was just marvellous that my son wanted to go out on field trips with me. I was fi
nally one of those fortunate fathers who could take him with me wherever I went, because our new life afforded me all the time in the world.

  ***

  When Steve was nine years old, I was asked by Queensland Parks and Wildlife Services to relocate a small colony of freshwater crocodiles on the Leichhardt River in the Gulf of Carpentaria in Far North Queensland. I decided to take him along with me. That was a fairly intrepid adventure; roads weren’t even built into some of those areas and we often made our own tracks into the places we wanted to go. The crocodiles were living in an isolated waterhole that was about to be drained and filled. Freshwater crocodiles, colloquially known as freshies, are exclusive to the far northern parts of Australia, and it was to be our first experience catching wild ones.

  I’d long had an interest in crocodiles, and soon after the park opened, I got in touch with the owner of Hartley’s Creek Zoo, north of Cairns, and asked if I could purchase some of his crocodiles. I’d already built the enclosure, so thankfully he said yes and I made the long journey up north to bring them home. My enclosure turned out to be a terrible design, because I hadn’t known that freshwater crocodiles are exceptionally good climbers; eventually I had to build the whole thing again from scratch. But that was ahead of me; for now, I just sat admiring them for hours, fascinated. I couldn’t believe these animals had remained unchanged for nearly eighty million years. They must be doing something right, I thought. The modern human has only been here some 200,000 years. I couldn’t wait for the opportunity to see them in the wild.

  On this freshie catching trip, Steve and I camped in a magical little spot on the banks of the Leichhardt River. The water was so clear we could see straight to the bottom of the creek bed. During the day we’d go snorkelling and watch the freshwater fish, and the little crocodiles motoring around with their powerful, muscly tails.

  Although freshwater crocodiles can grow to more than three metres long, they’re shy in comparison to their saltwater counterparts and reasonably harmless if left alone. We camped pretty rough; we didn’t have tents or anything like that, we just laid a big tarpaulin on the ground at night with a mattress on top. This set-up wasn’t always ideal. It didn’t work out too well the night a massive colony of fruit bats decided to set up camp in the tree above us. Without any cover, the bat poo pelted down on us like it was raining. The next morning the splodges of metallic-grey droppings made us look as though we’d been targeted by an army of paint-ball enthusiasts. Observing how they did it made it seem all the more intentional too. Although they hung upside down for most of the day, we were fascinated to watch them swap from hanging by their feet to turning themselves the right way up to hang by their wings in order to excrete. We’d learnt our lesson: we washed everything and found ourselves a new spot to camp the following evening.

  As night fell, we set to work to catch these crocs, pushing out into the river in our small aluminium dinghy. I controlled the outboard motor with one hand, and with the other used a spotlight to pick up their red eye-shines reflected on the surface of the water.

  ‘There’s one,’ I whispered to Steve. ‘Take the motor for a second.’ I kneeled at the front of the boat and, as we pulled up beside him, I leaned over the side, grabbing the croc around the neck and at the top of his tail and pulling him into the boat.

  I’ll never forget that first croc I caught. I wanted to keep cuddling it, albeit with a very firm grip, as I marvelled at it. It was fifty centimetres long, a small juvenile, and one of the cutest things I had ever laid eyes on. As I held it, it cried out in fear.

  After that the hardest thing was trying to keep Steve in the boat. Over the next few nights, he watched me catch croc after croc as he piloted the boat in the direction of my spotlight. I put the little freshies into bags for their relocation. After a couple of nights observing my technique, I knew he was chomping at the bit so I eventually let him have a go. ‘Get up here then,’ I said, handing him the spotlight. He was overwrought with excitement as he picked out his first set of croc eyes, and I navigated in the direction of his torch beam. ‘Just wait until I tell you to jump!’ I said. But he could barely wait; I could see by his already bent knees that he was itching to get out there.

  We idled up beside the jaws of a crocodile resting stealthily on the surface of the water. I had checked out the croc and knew it was small enough for Steve to safely handle himself. ‘All right, go!’ I shouted. He was in mid air before I’d even got the words out, and thrashing about in the water hanging on to this crocodile. But then he disappeared below the surface. It’s safe to say that I didn’t practise a lot of workplace health and safety back in those days. I just reached over the side of the boat and grabbed him by the back of the shirt, pulling him and the crocodile into the dinghy. He was still hanging on to it, arms wrapped tightly around it and grinning up at me, as I pinned both him and the crocodile to the bottom of the boat. I just shook my head in disbelief, not able to fathom the confidence of that kid. But I was as proud as a father could be, and watched him master his technique over the next couple of days, spearing himself into the water off the front of the boat like a little champion.

  We’d get back to camp at some ungodly hour of the night for a cup of tea and a bite to eat, and then I’ll be buggered if he didn’t want to set right out and do the whole thing again. All I’d want to do was hit the hay, but it was impossible to refuse him because he got such a kick out of the whole thing.

  That trip wasn’t only memorable for me, it was formative for Steve as well; it was the start of his croc-catching career. We knew then that his interest and passion would only grow, and it sure did. The crocodile thing was in my blood, and it got in Steve’s too. It was a continual thirst for more knowledge.

  After that trip to the Leichhardt River, crocs became an obsession. I wanted to catch more and more crocodiles for the park and make them a centrepiece of our reptile collection. Our family’s passion for crocs must have been fated, because the logo for our very first advertisement for the reptile park was a silhouette of a crocodile, long before we’d ever dreamed of displaying one.

  ***

  The Queensland state government introduced the Fauna Conservation Act one year after we opened the park, in 1974. This formed the foundations for the start of the protection of our precious native wildlife. Before that there’d been no limit on the animals anyone could kill or capture. But as this Act came into effect and time passed, I found better ways of doing things and I became ashamed that I’d made such basic mistakes in the beginning.

  Before the Conservation Act, anyone could pay a local contractor to catch whatever animal they wanted. I admit that I had been just as guilty of this as anybody else—up until then I’d just gone out and caught whatever I wanted to display. If I wanted a more uncommon native species like a green python or a scrub python, I’d go out into remote areas to find them, and at the same time see where the animal lived and the kind of environment it came from, so that I could better understand the conditions I needed to provide for it back at the park.

  Of course, with hindsight, such a free-for-all was completely unsustainable. But in those times, this laissez-faire attitude towards wildlife was the norm. Reptiles, in particular, had no protection in Queensland under the legislation up until this point. Once the Act came into effect, there was a huge learning curve, not just for me, but for the zoological industry across the board, and for the authorities themselves, as we all adjusted to a new way of operating.

  Under the new system, I eventually got a permit to catch five freshies to display at the reptile park. Lyn was happy to get rid of me, I think, and her parents, Nanna and Pa, would help her run the park while I was gone. Peter and I headed off with Lyn’s brother Graeme, who was also visiting from Melbourne. It was the sort of road trip that wasn’t for the faint-hearted.

  We first went up to Mount Isa to try to find some. As we studied the banks for crocodile slides, we were disappointed to find only shotgun cartridges lining the rivers and no crocs whats
oever. Where once the crocodiles had been kings of the river, hunters had systematically emptied the area clean of them. I decided to travel further up to the Leichhardt River, to the same place I had taken Steve. I knew there was an abundance of crocodiles in a particular location on the Leichhardt Falls, and so we set up camp there. The river was very low and the falls were dry, so we had a large, shallow area to explore, this time teeming with crocodiles.

  The first freshie Peter caught was a tiny little one, a small juvenile, perfect for his first ever catch. But Peter had grabbed it incorrectly and it spun around and bit him, drawing blood with its needle-sharp teeth. Still, Peter had a smile spread from ear to ear like a little kid. ‘How good is this!’ he exclaimed. ‘Now I can go home and say I’ve been mauled by a crocodile!’

  We continued to catch these tiny little freshies while we honed our technique. We’d keep them in the boat and if we caught a bigger one, we’d let the original one go. Landing the bigger ones was a little bit trickier. At that size, we couldn’t just reach over the side of the boat and pluck them from the water, because they were too hard to hold. So we had to virtually harpoon ourselves off the boat straight onto the crocodile and push him down to the bottom of the river. The crocodile-catching wound up being quite a playfully competitive exercise, each of us wanting to outdo the other in grabbing the biggest one.

  After finally agreeing on the largest five to take—crocs about five feet long—we broke camp and began the long, hot journey home with our freshly caught wild crocodiles. The crocodiles were riding on the back of the ute in purpose-built wooden crates that I had made.

  I was getting really concerned about how the crocs would fare on the road. I knew crocodiles were extremely susceptible to stress, and temperatures in the Far North Queensland summer were thirty degrees Celsius and higher. So I decided to stop at Winton, a small town in central west Queensland and the last place to stop for a few hundred kilometres. We pulled into the caravan park, where I asked the owners if we could hire out their laundry for the day. They were immediately intrigued. I realised it was a bit of a strange request—why would three grown men want sole use of a laundry?—but I was hesitant to tell them the reason: I wanted to give a handful of wild crocodiles a bath.