The Outback Wrangler

by Matt Wright

  Nick was lowered into waist-deep water full of leeches, snakes and spiders. As I went to unhook him from the sling, Nick begged me to leave him attached.

  ‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘I can get the shots from the air.’

  There wasn’t a chance in hell I was letting him off. I unhooked him and there we were together ready to advance on the croc nest. Nick was certainly as green as they come, but I’ve got to hand it to him – not too many people will volunteer to be slung around on a helicopter, much less being slung directly onto a nest with no experience of crocs in the wild. This guy was definitely serious about doing business with me.

  As we approached the nest, I let a couple of gunshots go into the water to scare off the croc that was patrolling nearby. I gave no prior warning to Nick, who shat himself the moment I fired. As I was getting onto the nest, the croc scampered onto it at full pace and smashed into the screen door. After a couple of goes at the screen, the croc slunk back into the water. Nick quickly clambered up onto the nest, wisely keeping away from the edge of the water. I collected the eggs and we moved onto the next one. Nick wasn’t pleased to hear there were more.

  While all this was going on, Nick was doing his best to film me on his handy cam. When it comes to camerawork, let’s just say Nick shouldn’t quit his day job. In fairness, he was understandably preoccupied with not being eaten. Besides, this wasn’t a test of his ability to film me in action. I wanted to see how he coped under serious pressure. For that reason, I saved the worst until last.

  I spotted a horror nest propped up on an overturned log in the middle of a swamp of more waist-deep water. There was one big girl sitting on the nest.

  ‘This one looks good to me,’ I shouted over the radio. ‘Put us down here, Gecko.’

  I had my crate, an eight-foot rod, a five-foot screen door and my pistol ready to go. As the chopper got closer, the rotor wash stirred up the croc and she began jumping at the chopper. At this point, Gecko flew over the nest providing Nick with his first look.

  ‘No, no, no!’ he shouted. ‘We’re not going in there.’

  ‘Yes, we are,’ I said.

  On cue, the crocodile swam directly under me and started leaping out of the water. It was trying to pull me off the sling. Gecko saw what was happening and pulled up.

  ‘You sure you want to go in?’ he asked.

  ‘You bet,’ I said. We hovered for a while, waiting for the croc to move off. Eventually she backed down into the water, giving me a small window to drop down.

  ‘Take me down!’ I shouted.

  Gecko put me on the nest. I landed in the water about 10 feet from the nest. I unclipped from the sling and Gecko took off. Nick came in next, right behind me. He was beside himself, even more than before.

  ‘This is fucking ridiculous!’ he shouted.

  ‘Start filming!’ I shouted back.

  ‘What the fuck is that?’ Nick shouted, pointing over my shoulder.

  On the other side of the nest, the croc was charging towards us. She was swimming fast enough for a wake of white water to trail off her head. I lifted the screen door, drew my pistol and pulled the trigger. I fired three times, the bullets disappearing into the water directly in front of the croc. It made no difference. She kept coming.

  ‘Bring the chopper back!’ Nick shouted.

  ‘Calm the fuck down and get over here!’ I shouted.

  Nick shimmied in behind me and started filming as the croc barrelled into the screen. She hit me with such force the screen was knocked out of my hand. That was a pivotal moment. I was knocked off balance and exposed. Had the croc launched an immediate second strike, I would have been gone. Luckily, she circled back around to build up a head of steam for another attack. I took hold of the shield and held it in front of me as she charged in towards me again and again.

  Sensing the fight was draining out of her, I holstered my pistol and started pushing her away with my stick. I managed to clear a path to the nest.

  ‘Stay close,’ I said to Nick. ‘She’ll come again.’ There was no need to ask Nick to stay close. He was stuck to me like a Siamese twin. Nick muttered something under his breath. I stole a quick glance behind me and had to suppress a smile. His eyes were as big as saucers and his face was ghostly white. I don’t blame him for shitting himself. Approaching a nest in the water is about as dangerous as this job gets.

  We waded through the water. A few feet from the nest, Nick scurried up onto the dry ground. He was breathing heavily, scanning the water for telltale signs of crocodile activity. I knew it was only a matter of time before that big female would recharge her batteries and have another crack. I got on the radio and called the Wolverine in for back-up. The Professor and the Wolverine are the only two fellas that I’d ever call in to deal with a croc like this one. Craig got lowered in and at the same time I heard Gecko’s voice crackle over the radio.

  ‘There’s another nest about 100 metres north of your position,’ he said.

  I turned round to Nick.

  ‘Ready to go one more time?’ I asked.

  His face dropped. But he nodded his consent. We ended up working until day’s end. There was a lot of action that day. We were all looking forward to seeing what Nick had shot. But when we looked back at his footage it was like we were watching a reel from The Blair Witch Project – lots of erratic footage, heavy breathing and absurd noises. It certainly wasn’t quality viewing. It’s a good thing we had the footage Mark had captured from the air.

  ‘I’ll take this back to Sydney and rustle up some interest,’ Nick said. ‘I promise you I’ll make it work.’

  I needed no further convincing. It’s one thing to talk a big game, it’s another to come out and clear nests. Nick had put his faith in me. The least I could do was return the favour.

  Nick was good to his word. He knocked on a lot of doors, worked the phone hard and persisted in the face of constant rejection. Nothing much happened for the first two or three years, just a whole lot of empty promises. Nick warned me that this might happen. Show business is a fickle game. We just needed to hang in there. Eventually, Nick said, we would catch a lucky break.

  He was right.

  20

  Monster Croc

  I’d been called onto a job up at La Belle Station, a huge property next to Litchfield National Park in the northwest corner of the Territory. The station owner wanted a number of crocs that were tearing through the station’s livestock removed. I was starting to make a bit of a name for myself as a croc catcher. With the crocodile population increasing, I was getting called more often. I was happy to help out. The Professor’s croc park in Darwin needed more crocs for breeding and I enjoyed the work. It was the perfect way to mix things up between mustering and heli-fishing work.

  This was a hell of a big job. The work was relentless. I had to base myself out at the station for over a month, croc catching day and night. My main aim was to catch mature females around the nine- to 12-foot mark, along with a few adolescent males that were sometimes over 14 feet. I also got the tip-off about a few larger crocs that needed to be taken out.

  Catching large crocodiles is an exhilarating, difficult and time-consuming activity. The process begins with a thorough investigation of the crocodile’s habitat. You have to think defensively, looking for signs and track marks in wallows indicating a croc’s place of rest. It’s important to critically survey the land and identify the spots where you think the crocodiles stalk their prey. It’s in these spots where you set your traps.

  After the areas of interest have been scouted and the hot spots identified, a plan is put in place to lure the crocodile into a trap. For the bigger crocs, it isn’t possible to simply stick a dead pig in a cage and wait for the crocodile to be caught. Something more imaginative is required. Equipment, fencing, supplies and boats all need to be slung out to the location. After a portable fence is constructed around the area of interest, an intricate set-up of ropes and pulleys is hooked up to a trapdoor.

  Clayto
n Howse and Paul ‘Benny’ Benbow – old school mates of mine from South Australia – flew up to help me catch some of the smaller crocs. Clayton and Benny were right into their surfing and loved an adventure. Most of the time their escapades consisted of big waves, jetskis and the ocean. This was their first taste of choppers, pigs and swamps. The boys helped me build contraptions, sling traps and shoot pigs for bait during the day. At night we were out on the water catching crocs from the boat. They were having a cracking time.

  One night, Garth – the station owner’s son – told us a story about an elusive crocodile that made his way around a waterhole on the station. People had only ever caught glimpses of the big male. There were no photographs, just stories of 700-kilo bullocks found on the banks of the waterhole, literally snapped in half. The croc had become the stuff of legend, the Top End’s version of the Loch Ness monster. Some people doubted its existence. But Garth and his family knew he was real. Garth had wanted to catch the monster croc, but his old man told him to steer clear. A croc that size was too dangerous to catch.

  Garth’s story got my heart pumping. He told me the where­abouts of the waterhole. That was where I would set the trap. At first light the next morning, Clayton, Benny and I slung the boat over to the waterhole and got to work. Before we built the trap, I wanted to properly scope out the area. We worked into the night, catching smaller crocs swimming in the waterhole and tying them off at the side of the bank. The boat was a 12-foot-long tinny. The small size meant we were forced to return frequently to the bank to unload our catch.

  Around midnight, having just tied off a couple of five- and six-foot crocs on the bank, Clayton’s spotlight lit up what we thought were a set of golden crocodile eyes on the far side of the waterhole. Off we went to investigate. Clayton kept the torch trained on those eyes the whole way across. As we came closer, he played the light along what we thought was the crocodile’s body. Instead, Clayton lit up a massive, black log with two perfectly etched holes at the base of its trunk that from a distance looked like eyes.

  Without warning, the engine started to cough and made strange crunching noises. We had taken the tinny into shallow water. The propeller was becoming entangled in weed. I killed the engine. I’d have to reach into the water and untangle the prop. I told Clayton to keep a look out with the spotlight while Benny came back to help me out.

  It was a moonless, pitch-black night. Every so often, forks of lightening would touch down on the horizon. Seconds would pass before a low rumble of thunder would roll across the water hole, scaring off the native birds nesting on the banks. Clayton continued scanning the water around the boat, then he froze. We all felt it. The energy in the air seemed to shift. We were in the presence of something big.

  ‘Fellas,’ I said, calmly as possible. ‘Stay back from the side of the boat and keep a keen eye out.’

  We all had our eyes scanning the area around the boat when there was a sudden explosion of water. Clayton swung the torch around to where we heard the splashing and lit up what we had mistaken for the massive log.

  ‘Lads, that log is moving towards us,’ Clayton said.

  ‘Holy shit,’ I said.

  My brain was struggling to register what I was seeing. The massive log was a massive crocodile. It’s difficult to judge the length of a crocodile when it’s half submerged in water in the dead of night. But I could say with absolute certainty that this was one of the largest crocodiles I had ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of them. We had just stumbled onto the monster croc Garth had told us about the previous night. More concerning was the fact the tinny had drifted between the crocodile and its path to deeper water. With the propeller still tangled up in weed, we were dead in the water.

  Benny was the first to pipe up.

  ‘Come on, fellas,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a crack and catch it. This might be our only chance!’

  As much as I admired Benny’s attitude, I don’t think he realised the enormous size of this animal. Clayton kept the light on the croc as he came towards us. I whispered to the boys not to move or make a sound as he approached the boat. The croc came straight to the front of the tinny then down the right-hand side, pushing us to the bank like we were just another piece of leafy debris. I kid you not: his head looked like it was half the side of the boat. You could hear every scale scraping down the side of the tinny.

  The lads were completely psyched. They were revelling in the experience of seeing such a massive animal up close and personal. I was less enthusiastic. We were in serious danger. An animal this large could flip the tinny over with a swipe of his tail. It was highly unlikely we would survive a midnight swim back to the other side of the bank.

  His head passed alongside the tinny. Nervous as I was, the sheer length of the animal was awe-inspiring. He slowly worked his way towards the back of the tinny and then cruised off into the night. I breathed a massive sigh of relief. I told Clayton and Benny to keep their eyes peeled while I finished untangling the prop. Once I’d removed all the weeds, I fired up the engine and we returned to the bank.

  I was buzzing the next morning. I wanted to get everything in place to catch this croc. But I needed more experience on the team, someone who knew how to handle big crocodiles. I got on the phone to the Wolverine. He didn’t take much convincing. After I told him what I had seen the previous night, he was practically out the door before hanging up the phone. I spoke to La Belle’s station owner Peter Camm too, and told him I needed more help. He gave me Garth and his daughter Amelia. Garth had his chopper licence, which was very handy, and Amelia proved a massive help too.

  Now it was time to set up the trap. I returned to the homestead and started slinging the gear out to the water hole. We picked a place on the south side of the waterhole, right where we had seen the croc the night before. Then came the hard part.

  Crocs do their hunting from the water. Therefore, in order to lure crocodiles into the trap, the panels need to be built into the water. Someone has to get into the croc-infested waterhole to fix the panels and the door. Being exposed in waist-deep murky water is the most dangerous part of the operation. It’s impossible to set up a trap without making a racket and drawing the attention of whatever lurks in the waterhole.

  After a lot of hard yakka, we finally finished the trap. It was big enough to comfortably fit about 10 head of cattle. Now it was time to bait it. This was the part that Benny and Clayton loved the most. We jumped in the chopper and flew across the floodplain to get a few pigs. Soon enough we found a mob of about 20 or so. I dropped the boys out and told them that we needed four of the biggest pigs they could find. I flew away and rounded them up, pushing the mob of feral pigs towards the boys. For a couple of blokes like Benny and Clayton, a licence to hunt feral animals got their adrenaline pumping. I could see their smiles from the air.

  They got what we needed without hassle. I’m not sure who shot what. One thing’s for sure: they wouldn’t stop arguing about who was the best shot and who shot the biggest pig!

  We got back to the trap and hooked up our dead pigs to the side of the fence. We made sure half of the carcasses were submerged, bloodying up the water. While the other halves were left out to rot on the side of the fencing, stinking the place up something terrible. The dead pigs were tied to a rope hooked up to a trigger device on the trapdoor. When the carcass was pulled off the side of the fence, the door would slam shut, trapping the crocodile in the pen.

  We got back in the chopper and let nature take its course. On the flight back to the camp, the sound of the helicopter sent hundreds of crocodiles of all sizes scurrying in the fright. This place was absolutely infested with them. I remember thinking at that point that this would be a good place to shoot a little piece about catching crocs. I didn’t realise how quickly that passing thought would turn into a reality.

  Next morning, I set out for the trap. On approach, I could immediately tell something had happened. The trap door was down and the water was stirred up around it. It looked like there was a cr
oc caught in one of the wings, which had me puzzled. I landed nearby and jumped into the boat to go and investigate. As I pulled up to the trap there was a lot of thrashing going on and I could see a 14-foot croc with its head caught in the rails. I tried to get him out when I realised there was a second croc caught in the same panel, but this one was stuck under the murky water. I had to move fast to get this one out otherwise it would drown.

  I started getting a rope around the one on the bottom of the rail when the water underneath the tinny just erupted. I grabbed hold of the top rail and pulled myself away from the crocs to see what was going on. There were tails, teeth and limbs coming out of the water left, right and center. A couple of panels on the trap looked like they were about to break free.

  Then it happened – one of the most epic things I have ever seen in the wild. The monster croc we had been trying to catch roared out of the water with one of the other crocs in his jaws. He dragged him out past my tinny and tore him apart in the middle of the lagoon. The sheer power of the animal made me freeze. It took me a few seconds to regain my senses. I had to get moving. I managed to free the other croc caught in the panel, reset the trap and get the hell out of there.

  The monster croc didn’t return to the trap. I continued on the day-to-day work of clearing out the other crocs for the remainder of my time there. Benny and Clayton went home with some great stories to tell and Garth, Amelia and a young fella Ross gave me a hand to keep catching. Every day I went about catching crocs on La Belle, I kept my eyes open for that massive animal. Eventually, I came across him again.

  It happened during one of my routine checks of the small traps. I saw him from my chopper, lying under a tree on the opposite side to where the trap was set. I hovered down in the chopper in front of him. We were eyeing each other off from about 10 feet apart. It was a highly charged moment. He was not in the slightest bit worried about me. The area looked like the perfect place to set another trap. All I had to do was get it around the tree he was laying under.