Crocodile Tears

"Never smile at a crocodile, don't be taken in by his toothy grin....La de tum de dum ta de dum dum". Words from a kids rhyme just popped into my head as we departed Townsville they way jingles are apt to do sometimes. I began to wonder who might spot the first croc on our trip to far north Queensland. My passengers for both legs of the journey had the youngest eyes in the fleet so I figured we were in with a chance for the 'first croc spotted' laurel.

Alas it was not to be. In fact as the sightings grew more numerous and the ratio of people who had supposedly seen one versus those that hadn't became a number considerably larger than unity I began to despair of ever sighting one of the creatures. By the time we got to Escot station I was positively paranoid. 'Crocodile!' radio calls along the coastal run through the gulf had become so numerous I began to doubt the voracity of the reports. "Digger Burke says twenty seven crocodiles having swimming races over here" crackled the headset. Yeah sure! "Fifty eight pigs being rounded up by five crocodiles on horseback" came another call. I hadn't even spotted so much as a drag mark. It was the old story, try too hard at something & you end up missing out altogether.

Trying to spot crocodiles, I decided, was going to be like my first quaint efforts at getting laid. There were several parallels; Firstly there were a lot of jokers claiming to have succeeded already. Secondly, they implied that it was so easy to accomplish that it was more or less a foregone conclusion. Lastly, the harder I tried the more frustrated I got.

I decided to give up on bloody crocodiles! And you know what? As often happens in life, when you stop busting a gut and take things more circumspectly it just all falls into place.

We went fishing at Escot. George, Jeremy & I loaded ourselves into a tinny & set off in search of Barramundi. After an hour or two of retrieving lures from over hanging tree branches we decided to go touring instead.

The day was warm, languid, lazy. Time seemed to slow down. Like a marble falling through honey we knew we would get to our destination, it was just a question of when. As we motored along the light cool breeze and the ever present birdsong lulled me into a benign stupor. The river bank slid past like a mini Amazon and my thoughts drifted again to thoughts of crocodiles. Big crocodiles. Huge crocs that slide threateningly from the bank into the water as you cruise past. I was propped up in the bow, hat pulled low over my eyes enjoying the play of dappled sunlight as it danced across the turbid brown water when it slid into view, all twelve centimetres of it! "Crocodile", I shouted making a grab for my camera, almost overturning the boat in the process. Jeremy proceeded to demonstrate that you can U turn a five metre runabout in a four metre wide channel & we photographed the bastard.

So behold dear readers (should have appended a 'drum roll' dot wav file here) the first official photographically documented crocodile sighting! Thank you linesman, thank you ball boys. Those wishing to lodge an appeal have thirty days to do so in writing to either Jeremy, George or myself. We will sit as a triumvirate panel to consider all claims fairly and without bias, however the judgement will be final and no correspondence will be entered into.