The Last Crocodile Hunter

by Bob Irwin

  ***

  After we’d spent years working at Cattle Creek, Queensland Parks and Wildlife Services was confident that we’d removed the majority of the crocodiles and assigned us a new waterway, the Burdekin River. By water volume this is Australia’s largest river, running from Charters Towers out to the east coast of Queensland at Ayr. The Burdekin was different from Cattle Creek, in many ways: the sandy banks make it harder to see the crocodile slides, mud leaves a lot more of an impression. The rough track made us really isolated once we got in there and it was a real hassle to get the crocodiles crated in and out of there on the back of our utes because of the rough terrain. The original permit for the Burdekin stated that there were just six crocodiles in that waterway to catch, just a couple of months’ work. Well, we probably caught double that number and they just kept on coming. What was originally a quick trip became much longer.

  Our camp on the Burdekin was much more isolated, on a vacant property almost one hundred kilometres from the highway. But there were one or two people around. One of the first locals we met was a cattle farmer who lived on the other side of the river. He’d bring his young daughter across the river every morning to catch the school bus. Although he wasn’t frightened of crocodiles, he was a bit concerned because he made this trip twice a day with his young daughter in a small boat, and he’d observed a crocodile hanging around the crossing point.

  ‘I’ll make a point of catching it, if I can,’ Steve told him when they first met out on the water. So we went out searching one night and caught sight of him. He didn’t look all that large, so instead of setting a trap we thought we’d try to catch him by hand. I was driving the boat, and Steve, who was a lot bigger and stronger than me, stood up the front searching with the spotlight, ready to spear himself overboard. I started to have reservations as we edged out into the middle of the waterway. If this crocodile was bigger than we thought then all hell was going to break loose. Crocodiles don’t give second chances.

  Steve suddenly spotted the croc, and wiggled the spotlight in its direction. I slowly idled up to it, keeping my eyes on the red-eye shines, and Steve handed me the spotlight as he got into position. Just as I leaned forward to grab the spotlight, over he went. But the water was only ankle-deep here and he belly-flopped onto a pile of flat rocks.

  ‘You all right?’ I asked as I helped him back into the boat, although I could already see he’d sustained a few injuries that he’d probably end up wearing for quite a few years afterwards. But as always, he didn’t complain. ‘Let’s try another night—’ I began, but Steve cut me off.

  ‘No, no, let’s give it another go.’

  So I turned off the motor and we and the crocodile sat in silence for an hour, maybe longer. When you’re in an isolated region, you are afforded all the time in the world. You have to just go with the flow.

  When Steve eventually turned the spotlight back on, the croc had moved to the other side of the river—what we now knew was the deep side. So I motored closer, and as we approached, Steve jumped on top of it, and of course it was a hell of a lot larger than we had guessed. That crocodile took Steve right to the bottom of the river as he hung on for dear life. And all I could do was sit there in the boat, waiting for him to surface. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Waiting for a lot longer than I was comfortable with. Then suddenly the water around the boat exploded and Steve surfaced with the crocodile in his hands. One hand was around the neck and the other was around the base of the tail. This thing was thrashing around and he just threw it into the boat, nearly capsizing it as he did so. This was all in complete darkness; the spotlight had gone out ages before.

  ‘What the bloody hell are you doing?’ I shouted. I was wearing only a pair of shorts, and had bare feet. And this crocodile was flailing about the inside of the boat unrestrained while Steve was hanging on to the side still catching his breath. I finally located the crocodile’s head by feeling around, and then sat on it, keeping its jaws closed with my hands. Steve managed to get back into the boat and sat on the bench seat, looking at me as I struggled with the croc, and he laughed, ‘He nearly drowned me, it’s your problem from here!’ But then he came over and secured its jaws.

  A person with half a brain wouldn’t have done any of that. Of course, jumping on a crocodile of any size in the middle of a river in the middle of the night goes against all common sense.

  When we got back to camp that night we just laughed at the stupidity of the whole thing. We didn’t go to bed for a long time, we just sat by the campfire and relived it. To a degree we were rejoicing in the fact that we were both still alive. That was one of our really special moments together. There are not too many other people on this planet who I shared those kinds of hair-raising experiences with. And I’m glad about that, because I don’t think I’d have been quite so lucky with anyone else.

  Steve was able to tell the farmer from across the river that he’d caught that crocodile, which gave the man some peace of mind as he ferried his young daughter across each day. I guess you could say that Steve certainly went to great lengths to make new friends on the Burdekin. But we knew, of course, that it was only a matter of time before another crocodile took its place.

  ***

  ‘Come on, old man,’ Steve said to me, ‘let’s have a day off to explore this place.’

  We were sitting around the campfire of a morning, boiling the billy and shovelling tea-leaves into it. The tea brewed at our camp was so famously strong that nobody else would agree to drink it.

  ‘How long will we be gone?’ I asked.

  ‘Not long, just a couple of hours,’ he said easily. I looked at him suspiciously. Not trusting him at all, I packed a couple of oranges as sustenance. Because it was a freshwater river, we didn’t need to take any drinking water. We threw in the fishing rods and set out in our dinghy along the Burdekin River. The first thing we did was to investigate a couple of croc slides and mark them on our map.

  Our work finding crocs never really did stop. It was unusual to have a day off. We worked from waking to bedtime. Normally we’d start by checking the traps early in the morning. If there was a croc, that’d be it: the rest of the day would be spent getting the croc out of the trap and all the way back to camp.

  If there were no crocs caught in the traps, we’d hunt for bait or reposition traps we weren’t happy with. Steve was an amazing guy to work with; he had boundless amounts of energy. He wore me out at times, but I refused to tell him that I was tired or I’d had enough. I’d just try to keep up with him as best I could.

  But our day off was memorable. We cruised along the river, pulling up at places on the banks to explore by foot. We went down turbulent rapids, coming very close to sinking the boat at one stage. Which wouldn’t have been good, because we were fast finding out that the Burdekin was home to a lot of very large salties. But that was Steve—his kind of fun wasn’t for the fainthearted. If you were concerned about your life, you’d have been best staying back at camp.

  We finally pulled up for some fishing close to the junction of the Bowen and Burdekin rivers. I was hoping for barramundi, sooty grunter or mangrove jack. A fresh fish cooked on the campfire would be a real treat. Fishing was my thing; Steve was too impatient to sit and wait.

  As my sinker plopped into the water, I noticed a number of turtle heads poking out of the water all around us. I had seen this type of turtle on the Burdekin before, but we’d always been in too much of a hurry to stop and take a better look. They weren’t your average freshwater turtle: they had really big heads and were unusually pale in colour. And as we sat there quietly I grew more and more curious about them.

  ‘Let’s grab one of these guys and see what they are,’ I said to Steve. Just like that, he was over the side, jumping straight onto one of these turtles in the notoriously crocodile-infested Burdekin River, and back into the boat just as fast. As he pulled the turtle on board and we were able to take a closer look, we both concluded we hadn’t seen anything like it before.

&nb
sp; They were a lot bigger than most freshwater species, with a carapace about forty centimetres wide. We eventually had four of them in the boat. We took photographs of the markings on the head and the shell and then returned them to the water. We headed back to camp well past nightfall, our ‘couple of hours’ unsurprisingly having stretched into an entire day.

  That night we got out the reptile reference books that I always carried with me, but found nothing resembling the turtles we’d seen. When I eventually got back to the reptile park, I phoned around to see if I could find out more. We were referred to an expert in the field, John Cann, as our best bet in helping us to identify this turtle. John’s father, George Cann, had been the curator of reptiles at Taronga Park Zoo from the 1930s onwards, and the two of them had been well known for their reptile show at La Perouse in Sydney. John was then known as The Snake Man to many, and luckily for us, he was a legendary herpetologist and specialist on Australian turtles.

  Steve drew a mud map indicating where we had found the turtles, and posted it to him together with the photos, addressed to ‘the finest turtle man in the world’. We were interested to see if these turtles were anything out of the ordinary.

  And it turned out they were. John says:

  On the 17 October 1993, I received a photograph from the Queensland Reptile and Fauna Park of a turtle complete with hand-drawn maps of the location in which the turtle was found marked as ‘Hidden River’. Almost as soon as I opened the mail that day I knew that I was staring at the face of a previously undescribed species of Australian freshwater turtle.

  The turtle was morphologically very distinct from any other turtle I had seen with a primitively white head and yellowish horny sheath on the crown and the shell was marginally different as well. Irrespective of what genetics was saying about its likeness to the DNA of other similar-looking species already identified in the region, I was quick to verify that what we were looking at was in fact a brand new species unknown to science. I hastily made a phone call to Bob and Steve to share with them my findings.

  ‘Would you allow me to describe it?’ I asked, hoping for the opportunity to formally publish this exciting discovery bringing it to the attention of the scientific world.

  ‘You’re very welcome to it,’ Steve replied and I went about naming the species, despite the fact that after word got out about our discovery, a number of other researchers had made contact with the park, eagerly hoping for the chance to identify it first.

  I wanted to recognise Bob and Steve for their work in unearthing this turtle, although it was a departure from the Aboriginal names that I traditionally gave to describing new species. I settled on the Latin name ‘irwini’, following ‘Elseya’, the genus describing large side-necked turtles or Australian snapping turtles. To my surprise, after my findings were eventually published, a fellow researcher made the observation that I’d in fact made an oversight in the naming process because ‘i’ referred only to one person. The correct terminology was in fact ‘irwinorum’, ‘orum’ meaning after two people. I’ll blame it on my limited knowledge of Latin grammar at the time, but it was always intended to commemorate Bob and Steve Irwin collectively.

  Nevertheless, I officially announced a new species of Freshwater turtle publically in Monitor Magazine in the time that followed. From that day forward another species was added to the list of Australian native species becoming known to the world as Elseya irwini, or commonly known as, ‘The Irwin’s Turtle’.

  I continued to work with the Irwin family over many more years as I went on to do a significant amount of research on Elseya irwini, together sharing our findings. I ventured up on a number of occasions to the Burdekin River myself to study the turtles precisely where Steve had marked on that first hand-drawn topographical map he had posted to me. Admittedly when I initially glanced at that primitive-looking map in the mail, I did think that the turtles would be impossible to locate. But sure enough, they were precisely where he’d outlined. An ‘X’ perfectly marked on the area of the map which they inhabited. I went on to locate many of the turtles up there as I dived about somewhat uncomfortably in the shallows, knowing that there were a lot of big crocodiles around. But I quickly discovered why Bob and Steve had nicknamed it ‘Hidden Valley’, a pristine and isolated part of the world complemented by the impressive Mount Wickham in the distance. It was apparent that anything could remain unfound in a place like this; the perfect home for the elusive Irwin’s turtle that previously stayed unknown to man.

  It was certainly an exciting time to be involved in the world of herpetology and I thank Bob and Steve Irwin for that opportunity.

  It was all quite a thrill. John Cann was an incredible guy to work with, an exceptionally knowledgeable legend in his field. We couldn’t thank him enough for going off our basic observations, to uncover a new species.

  So while we might not have caught our dinner that day, what we did find has gone on to be far more significant to the knowledge of our natural world.

  ***

  In the time Steve and I camped up on the Burdekin River for our very last subcontracting permit, one thing never altered: he just never shut up about Cattle Creek. I don’t think he talked about anything else as we sat by the campfire at night drinking tea by the bucketful or along the riverbanks setting traps by day. The stories of those days just flowed out of him, and it was clear to me that the experiences he had gained in those years would stay with him forever. Unlike most other young adults, Steve would spend hours of an evening filming a brushtail possum in the fork of a tree, with a commentary on how it lived, what it ate and how important it was. While he didn’t have a university education he was wiser than his years, and a self-taught naturalist, with the utmost compassion for all living things.

  There was no crocodile-catching textbook then, no manual describing what top jaw rope to attach. Everything Steve and I knew came from the experiences of those years. I guess you could say he was thrown in the deep end, and he did more than swim: he pulled out some of the biggest saltwater crocodiles that a bloke could manage on his own. With the swamps and mangroves of Cattle Creek as his classroom, that twenty-two-year-old boy emerged as one of the most knowledgeable individuals on crocodiles around; it was the making of the Crocodile Hunter himself.

  In those years contract-catching for the East Coast Crocodile Management Program, we wound up rehoming close to one hundred saltwater crocodiles to our Crocodile Environmental Park. And during those years, as we removed scores of crocodiles from their natural environment, depleting those river systems of the species that kept those ecosystems in check, there were just three fatal croc attacks in Queensland, averaging one every two years. So to address the very low probability of anyone dying from a crocodile attack, hundreds of crocodiles were removed from their homes. Statistically you’re more likely to be killed by falling coconuts or die from a bee sting than you are to be mauled to death by a crocodile. In those same years of our permit, eight hundred or so people in Australia died from accidental drowning. Around fifty people were struck by lightning. Crocodiles were always taking the rap as man-eating monsters but let’s face it, not one of those crocodiles stole anyone out of their bedrooms at night.

  In most of those fatal attacks by crocodiles, people had willingly entered into the crocodile’s domain. It just boils down to the fact that we’d lost respect and wariness around our apex predators out in their natural environment. Steve and I never personally felt that many of the crocodiles we relocated were nuisance crocodiles. But I guess that depends on your point of view.

  Our contract stipulated we were to remove any crocodile over 1.2 metres in size. Well, in my opinion, a 1.2 metre crocodile is no threat to anybody, not even a little child. At that size they’re still immature, just little reptilian nomads trying to keep out of the way of anything that could threaten their survival. In my experience, crocodiles aren’t a threat until they’re around three metres in size, when they’ve completely lost their fear of humans. Unless, of course, they
’ve been enticed into populated areas by people cleaning fish at boat ramps, for example. Generally speaking, large male crocodiles are the problem. And yet we removed immature females and males, animals that were so wary and elusive. All for peace of mind.

  The problem we face, and that our children’s children will continue to face, is the lack of harmonious coexistence between humans and large predators. And while it was crocs that people had targeted this time, it’s no different the world over, whether it be sharks, lions or grizzly bears. Every single time we hear of the unfortunate event of a human being attacked, the animals also suffered. Yet they were in these places long before we were. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it’s the humans who have made a mistake.

  When our contract expired up on the Burdekin, I didn’t sign on for another permit. Our park was full, simply chock-a-block with crocs. It had gone from being a collection of native snakes with a handful of crocodiles to one of the largest wildlife facilities in the state and beyond, with crocodiles as our main attraction. Crocodiles had become our mission.

  Our Crocodile Environmental Park was eventually launched with the unveiling of a new addition to the front of the park: a 13.7-metre-long sculpture of a crocodile. It had been carved from a five-ton two-hundred-year-old yellow stringybark tree that had been felled when it got in the way of a new railway line through the local Glasshouse Mountains. But it was put to good use as the symbol of our park. An expert woodchopper, who went by the name of Shane-Saw, spent three weeks carving it into shape with an array of chainsaws. His model was a baby saltwater crocodile we held beside him as he tirelessly chipped away. It was a masterpiece that showed everyone who visited that, in our eyes, crocs ruled.

  The Crocodile Environmental Park flourished and before long our carpark was overflowing. Word was spreading about our crocodile demos. But it was all beginning to surpass both my own area of expertise and also my desire to work with tourists. I didn’t do people all that well, preferring to toil away in the background with physical work. We had come to a fork in the road. We either had to change to keep up with the demand, or remain as we were and run the risk of going backwards.