Jumping Croc Cruise

9th of September 2006

Zac, Nick and I had decided to go on a Jumping Croc Cruise, since it sounded pretty wicked...!

We left Darwin about lunchtime and headed towards Adelaide River on the Crocodile Express bus, which has the highest concentration of crocs in Australia! We had a few stops on the way. First one was at some massive dams, which are actually a part of an old abandoned rice growing project! Long story short, a few decades ago, the government wanted to show the bloody Asians that they weren't the only ones who could grow rice, so they started this HUGE project (see the hill ranges in the background? That's how far the dam goes) - a couple of large dams which created a swamp-ish kind of thing. Then they started planting rice like the Asians, but it turned out to be a big flop, since the wet season drowned the rice (an example: the rivers rise more than 16 metres when the wet season starts!), the rice started rotting before they packed it etc... Eventually they gave up and left the dams as they were, and it actually ended up as a massive wetland for all sorts of water birds, crocs etc. So for once, something manmade did the wildlife a big favour. I'd say we saw about a billion birds...

Next stop was a little exhibition, which explained a lot about the ecosystems in the tropical NT etc., and had a great 360 degree view. 2 minutes later, we arrived at the river! Before we went on the boat, we said hello to a couple of snakes! The one I'm playing with on the picture is a Carpet Python called Mat... Muahahahaha... Pure Aussie humor!!! They had a Diamond Python called Neil (like Neil Diamond) as well :O)

Finally, it was time to jump on the boat! And we were lucky, since we were a small group of people, we went on a lot smaller boat, which meant you could pretty much touch the crocs... In case you were tired of one of your arms or so :) Didn't take more than a couple of minutes before the first croc was approaching. What they did was attach a piece of meat to a string on a stick, and then use it to make the croc try to grab it, as shown on the video. First one actually got bored and took off, but most of them managed to grab their dinner doing a jump. Quite amusing! The concentration of crocs on the river was crazy. They were all over the place, both on the banks and in the water. We got really close to a four metre big fella who was too busy sun tanning to move. They also fed kites by throwing little pieces of meat up in the air to make them catch it - impossible to take photos of, but it was quite interesting to see how they caught their "prey" each time as if it was the easiest thing in the world. We got a bit of a bonus when a sea eagle was flying above us, fighting one of the kites. The guy with the food managed to make it dive for a free steak - wauw. On the way back, we met a 70-year old croc, named Hannibal the Cannibal by the locals. He was about six metres, which is PRETTY big, since they grow to an absolute maximum of 7 metres. Scary animal, but fascinating at the same time. Just think about the fact that crocs have existed on earth for more than 200 million years! That means that these guy's great*100000-grand-parents was hanging out with dinosaurs... Crikey!