'Throw the life vest, then swim the other way ...'

"C'mon, Aggro. Do your stuff …"

Aggro didn't seem particularly interested in the brace of pork chops dangled in front of his snout. Though he had cared enough to slither out of his comfortable mud on the side of the Adelaide River to join us.

"Remember, keep your hands inside," our skipper and guide, Steve, warned. At that point, with Aggro up very close and personal to the riverboat, we really didn't need the reminder. The crocodile might not be showing big interest in raw chops, but a couple of fingers or a hand might well have tempted him to an appetiser.

"Come on, Aggro," Steve called again, this time almost bouncing the tasty pork on the croc's nostrils. After a further investigation, swishing his tail to stay with us against the current, he made a rather half-hearted jump at the bait, but failed to win as it was whipped beyond him. Then he simply gave up and disappeared under the boat.

"OK, we'll go and see if one of the others is hungry," our guide said, unfazed at Aggro's lack of commitment. "His loss this time."

Later, we were given a number of jumping exhibitions as a couple of other crocodile residents on this stretch of the river proved both that they were interested in a tit-bit, and also that they had the jumping skills to get it. But truth to tell, it was really more interesting to watch the various specimens going about their normal, fairly lazy lives on the slippery banks or cruising on the water. Very quickly the instinctive fear dissipated, and they almost seemed friendly.

Though we all still did keep our hands inboard of the gunwhales ...

Steve knew each of the beasts by name, and pointed out individual characteristics. "That one has lost four inches of his tail, we call him Stumpy." Another had a lower tooth protruding through his upper jaw, having snapped too hard with his five-tonnes closing pressure on something — a pair of teasing pork chops? We came across Mary Jane, who was looking somewhat grumpy about the green praying mantis hitching a ride just back of one of her eyeballs. She sorted that with a quick submergence, then came back and gave Steve some relief by becoming the first to win the porky snacks off this particular tour.

Crocodiles have reputedly been around since before the dinosaurs, and despite having a brain only the size of a walnut they've managed to hang around ever since, seeing off into extinction many other species, including said dinos. But by around the 1970s in northern Australia they were themselves heading for the same fate, a species victim to massive hunting to satisfy a fad for expensive croc skin accessories. Reputedly down to about 3,000, a campaign by a husband and wife team of former hunters turned conservationists helped win them a protected status in 1970. Without any predators, it's now estimated that they number 100,000 plus in the Northern Territory, with maybe another 50,000 in other areas including Queensland.

"But we can't just let them keep multiplying," one woman on the boat suggested, reasonably enough.

"Well, they're protected," was the answer. "But about 80,000 eggs are removed from their nests every year." Since only one out of hundreds of eggs laid ever becomes a croc, that is likely to curtail numbers somewhat.

Still, each one of those new crocs has a fair chance of making their presence felt — they can live for typically in excess of 60-80 years. And they don't need much to keep them going. "About the equivalent of one chicken a week will do it," Steve says. When pressed on the makeup of that diet, he lists local fish like barramundi, small animals that stray to the river banks — dogs are particularly appreciated — and the occasional kite that miscalculates on a dive and lands in the water. "Their feathers aren't waxed, so they can't easily fly off again."

His inevitable addendum joke about 'the occasional tourist and local' adding variety to the crocs' food intake is recognised as just that, since he had told us in his initial briefing that 'more people are killed by sharks in Australia than by crocodiles' … the average is a little over one a year. That said, like sharks, crocodiles have evolved over millions of years to become almost perfect predators.

The same kites buzz the boat with their own performance as Steve throws scraps of pork rind into the air. Their flashing dives are all accurate as they catch the pieces in the air. None of them reach the water.

On the way back downriver there was a sudden thump and judder, and Steve cut the engine. For a few moments we drifted, then the engine restarted and we continued on our way. "A bit of floating log, under the surface …"

But for just those moments, I probably wasn't the only one on board who wondered would we have to take Steve's advice in his briefing, about the life-vests stowed under everyone's seat?

"There's one for everybody," he'd noted. "But crocs are attracted to bright colours, and they're bright red. So, maybe the best thing to do in an emergency would be to throw the life-vest in one direction as a decoy and then swim as hard as you can for the bank in the opposite direction …"

That might even have properly piqued Aggro's interest.

---

Do's and Don'ts of driving in Australia

Tourists who intend to drive here in Australia should first take time to get to know the rules of the road that pertain here, writes Trish Whelan from Adelaide, the capital city of South Australia.

While there are eight states and territories in this huge country, road rules are largely the same, which is good news if you travel around.

Many visitors fail to realise just how big this country really is and that the distances between towns vary significantly with distances between the major cities even greater. Conditions can be very hot and dry, with fuel and food not always available for miles and miles. Make sure you hire a car with a big tank, and a large boot!

Pictured above: Innes National Park, near Marian Bay on the Yorke Penninsula, about five hours drive out of Adelaide.

Destination: Port Douglas, Australia

Port Douglas, just over an hour's drive on Captain Cook Highway north of Cairns, in Queensland, Australia, has been transformed from a sleepy fishing village into a top international holiday resort in recent years, writes Trish Whelan.

The town, founded in 1877 as a mining town after gold was found there, is named after a former Premier of Queensland, John Douglas. While still small, its population can double with the influx of tourists during the peak May-September tourism season.

Getting a gold rush

The visual, gastronomic and winery delights of the Mornington Penninsula to the south-east of Melbourne are well known to the city’s visitors, writes Brian Byrne. But a drive in the opposite direction can bring rather different rewards.

The city of Ballarat doesn’t have a seaside, and even Lake Wendouree which hosted the rowing in the 1956 Olympics has dried up to a few square metres of reedy water, leaving the old boathouse slipways eerily sloping into grass. But, as the place where the world’s biggest alluvial gold rush began in 1851, it has a rough romantic fascination.

At the height of the rush, some 10,000 people sluiced and dug there for a shiny dream. Most scratched barely a living, but a few major fortunes built a city with fine homes, the essential ‘Royal’ hotel, a university, botanic gardens, and a theatre.

Ballarat today has highly prized Victorian architecture, a wealth of ornate bluestone and brick buildings making Lydiard and Sturt Streets worth the walk. From the town centre, the Grand Avenue of Honour stretches 15km into the countryside, its 4,000 trees sporting plaques dedicated to local soldiers who served in WW1.

The Sovereign Hill attraction reconstructs the 1850s, well worth at least half a day to experience and visualise how tough things were then. School tour kids dress up in contemporary clothes, try nib and inkwells in the school, and go down a mine. They can pan for gold too.

'Blood under the Southern Cross' is a sound and light presentation depicting the Eureka Stockade miner's rebellion against excessive licence fees. It was a bloody episode, but an Irishman at their head, one Peter Lalor from Co Laois, did well politically from it, later becoming an MP for the State of Victoria.

Comfortable in the Mornington wineries, I hadn’t really intended to go to Ballarat. But it was a couple of days well spent, reminding that Australia not so long ago had days which weren’t all wine and roses.

Diving on the Barrier

It was the shock of the cold of the water that brought me to my senses.



What on earth was I doing out in the Pacific Ocean off Queensland, 30 nautical miles from land, and preparing for a lengthy swim in a high tide!

More here

Advt