From My Notebooks In 1976: The Croc’ Hunter

Here, at last, what you’ve been waiting for – the tale of the croc’ hunter.

We are in far north Queensland, where we had just caught a mud crab, but I forgot to note how utterly delicious it was. Huge clumps of white flesh. Never had anything like it since.

So, on again, word for word . . .

Monday 5th January, 1976

We are advised to leave while the going’s good. The tractor repair guy has returned and says Cooper’s Creek is still down. It’s beginning to rain after a dry night. Bill comes with us on his trail bike to help in case I get stuck, and we move gingerly off. As far as the creek the going is tolerable and this time I ride through the creek unaided. Bill waves and turns back, and we go on into worse adventures on clay slopes, eventually falling over in a puddle – but no damage, and Carol takes it well. The rain goggles are a disaster – fog up inside like all the others, and the lens also falls too easily out of the soft frame. At speed perhaps the airstream might help, but it’s at slow speeds, stumbling through mud and potholes that one wants to see best, and can’t. The answer is to wear nothing. Brakes, likewise, will only dry out at speed.

Ted in the Bush, smelling the flowers

Back at the ferry, not realising it was Susie passing us coming over, we get into conversation with the one-legged ferry man. A wispy fair beard, a saucy expression, he talks about his life as a crocodile hunter – up to $20 for a “freshie” – double for a “saltie” – he had one 16ft saltie that brought $240 for the skin. Said he’d never go after one of those again. Too big to land in the boat, they had to skin it in the water, attracting shoals of small shark (water very shallow) which lacerated their legs. H says there were three of them shooting together – both the others are dead. One turned out to have been a convicted rapist who’d killed a man, and was eventually shot dead after killing another. The other was his wife’s brother, who died of septicemia. His own leg he lost to cancer, but after it had been badly mashed up. Croc shooting, he claimed, wasn’t all that dangerous, nor that rewarding. “You get wages and a half, but you’re doing what you like best. If they opened it up again I’d be off in the morning.”

It seemed like a brave boast, but perhaps not. The shot is all-important – a target of 6” diameter at relatively short range, and if you know your job you won’t often have to swim to collect the corpse. Says there are plenty of freshies left to build up the population, now that they’re protected, but there aren’t enough salties left to keep a man in wages.

One of his favourite places is Bourketown, in Queensland. There’s a pub, and very little else. The walls and floor are all at an angle, from being hit by storms, and when it floods the clients have to row themselves to the thunderbox at the bottom of the yard. A Yank was the host, but he got a bit “Tropo” and after periods of sanity he would become violent in the Wild West manner, punch his clients across the bar, and come down the stairs with guns blazing. They put him away, and then the pub was hit by a “whirly-whirly.”

Another character he knew who was “Tropo” had a pet white cockatoo which he used to put on trial for misdemeanors – the case for and against was considered carefully before judgement. At the time it was doing twenty days for chewing a shoelace.

Tuesday 6th

Back in Redlynch. The green frogs on the doors, windows, leaping impressively, all sizes. The huge cane – 8ft or more – mosquitoes of different sizes and pitch – the croaking in the river – covered with floating vegetation – the big, brown bush pheasants settling down on the cane field.

[The cane trains – a complete railways system to serve the sugar mills – counted 200 hundred baskets south of Sarina.]

Brian Adams decides to give us three of the four bracelets to take away with us. Carol buys a tongue to eat for dinner. A convivial evening, each describing his own building.

Wednesday 7th

We planned to go to Green Island but missed the boat through laziness, compounded by Brian’s kitchen clock.

Went to Cairns and Atherton Tableland, to Kuranda and half-way to Mareeba. Dinner with Brian and Anne, then train at 10pm.

[Apparently we then took a train back to Brisbane to avoid riding the same roads back. I remember nothing of this now. The train took two days. We arrived in Brisbane on the 9th.]

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PS: Vladimir Pudding has been putting the lights out in Kharkiv for a couple of days and nights. We really must do something to stop him. If you have a congressman, please write to him.