The Crocodile Hunter: The Incredible Life and Adventures of Steve and Terri Irwin (6 page)

You beauty!

That day Chilli and I got a fairly large putrid piece of meat to use in re-baiting the trap. I parked my boat way downstream and carried the bait in over my shoulder. This way I would leave no tracks or boat disturbance around the entrance to the trap. Surely the rotting meat would be enticing to him.

That night I couldn’t sleep. It took forever for the sun to appear. First light I raced straight to the trap. Nothing. Nothing touched, no signs, no slides, no marks—nothing. Just bloody green ants. Disappointed and a little grumpy, I muttered to Chilli, “It’s cool. It’s always four nights after they’ve hit the lead-in. Remember your own observations.”

The next night came around; it was a struggle to sleep. Next morning, nothing at the traps. The following night it was easier to sleep—the excitement was dwindling. Sure enough, next morning nothing again at the traps.

That day Chilli and I lugged in a huge Barra boar, which I carefully placed in the “hot spot” trap, hoping its smell would do the trick.

Mysteriously, that night I was abruptly woken by a commotion in the mangroves. Something was wrong. Chilli was alert and agitated, the klunk klunk bird was silent, and the fireflies were thick. It was a few more hours until daylight, so I stoked up the campfire and dozed, engulfed by the warmth of the blaze.

At first light Chilli and I casually fueled up and headed for the traps. It was different on the river this morning. Nothing at the first couple of traps. As I rounded the bend and zoomed into the “hot spot” trap, I got the shock of my life. Adrenaline surged through my swollen veins. “This is it, Chilli! This is it! Stay cool, Steve.”

The mangroves erupted; a huge jolting force pounded the bow of the boat. Panic was pushing my eyeballs out—I must stay in control! Oh crikey! His tail and back leg are out of the trap—my trap’s not big enough! The tide’s coming in and already he’s surrounded by water. Think quick! Keep a grip…get a top-jaw rope.

Securing the boat in the trap entrance, I climbed into the mangroves with a couple of top-jaw ropes and headed in toward the croc’s head.
Whack!
As soon as he saw me he head-butted a huge mangrove tree and snapped it off.

“Settle, boy, settle!”

Whack!
He clobbered another huge tree. Once around the front of his head,

I snapped off a stick and tried to thread a top-jaw rope between his massive yellow teeth. He lunged straight at me, ripping the stick and rope clean out of my hands. He snorted and blew mucus and spray into my face. His eyes were wide, full of anger and fear.

“Chilli! Get around here!” But no way was she budging from the safety of the boat.

Me and a local bloke with an adult female saltwater crocodile I captured in the eighties.

Whoosh!
The croc exploded in a thrashing frenzy. He gripped the trap in his teeth and went into a series of violent death rolls. The instant he stopped I positioned my top-jaw rope stick, then jammed it between those huge teeth and pushed it out the other side. Scampering between the aerial mangrove roots, I seized the rope end before he had time to react. I sensed he was tired.

“You’re a big boy, you’re a monster…but are you the legend?” As I talked to him constantly, he hissed and growled straight back at me.

Finally I secured my first top-jaw rope and hastily knotted it to the nearest tree. I readied another rope. As soon as I was in range to secure it he exploded again. He struck out at me with a bone-crunching head thrash, then spun into another death roll. This time the jaw rope wrapped around his head, and the tree it was tied to was winched down until it snapped off. He settled and I regained the rope and secured it to the biggest tree in the vicinity. Hoping it would hold, I secured another two top-jaw ropes while he recovered.

I felt no fear; I was working on instinct. Sheer guts and determination were stamped in my brain. Now that he was restrained, I had to shift him. I climbed back into the boat, grabbed a trap and bags, and threw them over his head, which worked as a blindfold.

Being captured and crated was undoubtedly traumatic for this big croc but it saved his life.

Happy that he was temporarily secured, I sped back to my camp and grabbed my back-up boat and a winch. The moment I returned he violently shook and death rolled, but my jaw rope held strong. As I pushed the back-up boat alongside him I was reminded of the speed with which the tide was coming in.

I’m running out of time, I thought. In the trap he’ll drown quickly on the high tide.

His breaths were deep and drawn out—he was exhausted. Within minutes I’d secured the winch to the trap and commenced winching. The slack was taking up nicely. Then he exploded into another death roll. Both trees I was winching from snapped off and fell straight on his back, followed by me and the winch. He growled and thrashed. Thank God my jaw ropes held.

It appeared impossible that just one person would be able to manipulate such an awesome, powerful mass into the boat. I pondered for a moment. The croc hissed and started into another death roll and I lurched the boat on its side as he rolled. His massive body engulfed the boat and rolled it upright. Incredibly, he was in the boat. Quickly I ran ropes around the entire croc and boat, hoping to restrain him in the flimsy dinghy.

Once I was happy he was secured to the boat, the reality hit me: I’m going to need help. The tide was powering in and it was obvious that croc and boat were not going to float. At a great rate of knots I got back to camp, jumped into my 4WD, drove to the nearest homestead, and alerted some locals.

When we got to the trap my helpers were overwhelmed by fear. Although the croc was secured in a boat—which was now underwater—it took some real persuasion and ten cartons of beer to get them to help. The tide was almost high and the boat was completely submerged but luckily the croc’s nostrils were above the water. Eight burly farmers and myself were only just force enough to lift the boat and croc up out of the water sufficiently to allow us to bail out the water. With a boat on each side of the black bloke and me in with him bailing out water, we kept him afloat and got him back to a nearby ramp on a cattle property. The owner obligingly got his front-end loader and we lifted croc and boat from the ramp onto dry land.

A crowd started to develop. News of the “legend’s” capture traveled like wildfire. I walked in circles, torn between success and despair. Had I done the right thing? Would this truly magnificent ruler have eventually succumbed to the shooters otherwise? Was my intervention right or wrong?

Acco today, at home in the Park.

People shook my hand, patted my back. I wasn’t a hero; I just loved my crocs and would do anything to protect them. The situation’s not their fault, it’s people’s. Surely we can learn to live with them. This bloke’s not an enemy—he’s a king.

“Please get back from him, move back,” I pleaded. The onlookers were starting to make me angry.

“Oh, he’s so ugly…”

“There’s a few good boots, bags, and belts in this one…”

“You should shoot the lot of ’em…”

Such were the saddening comments flowing from their mouths.

Luckily some people from the National Parks and Wildlife Service arrived with a crate. The exhausted old croc, blindfolded and confused, was slowly winched into the crate. He managed enough strength to deliver a final death roll, defiant to the end. Tears trickled down my cheeks.

“Please don’t die,” I whispered to him.

After being crated, he was sent down to our park by rail. Dad met him at the railway station and immediately flew into action. He had him in his new territory with a beautiful girlfriend within an hour. Dad understood the stress this poor old croc was suffering and cut no corners to ensure that he was treated like royalty.

Back at camp I was sitting by the campfire, cuddling Chilli, feeling empty and fearful for the croc’s life. The capture of the big black legend was going to change him and me for the rest of our lives.

Out West, A Wide Brown Land

T
he world’s most venomous snake, the fierce snake (or western taipan), with venom fifty times more toxic than the Indian cobra, produces enough toxins in one bite to kill dozens of healthy adult humans. Discovered and described in the 1870s, this Australian species was then unseen by scientists for nearly one hundred years. The place in which it was rediscovered in 1972 is an area close to my heart and one that I still frequently visit to conduct scientific research.

The desire to find the fierce snake stimulated a massive effort by the Queensland Museum and Dad and myself, and it was during this hunt that my passion for the deserts, plains, and escarpments of Central Australia was kindled.

We’ve always referred to Central Australia as “out west.” As the crow flies it’s approximately seven hundred miles due-west of the Reptile Park. Even as a kid I remember the relentless, never-ending drive to get there. It usually takes twenty-four hours of straight driving on a good run—the conditions become more extreme the further west you go. Central Australia is a land of graphic contrasts. Drought one day, floods the next. From scorchingly unbearable heat to freezing cold. And then there’s the dust and flies.

My ground-level approach to studying fierce snakes.

After a few days of scorching heat the wind will build to gale force, picking up dirt and sand in its path and blowing it across the landscape. Once, Dad and I were struck by a dust storm in which visibility was down to thirty feet; even our 4WD was penetrated by clouds of powder-like dust. When the dust storms pass, on come the flies. These sticky little black bush flies have driven many unseasoned travelers insane. Basically, you’ve got to handle being subjected to having a swarm of writhing flies all over your body from sunup to sundown.

But I guess it’s the heat that sorts out the men from the boys in this country. Twenty-four hours without water in the summer heat and you’re dead. If your vehicle breaks down out here you’re instantly in loads of trouble. Even on the busier roads you may see only a couple of cars in a week. On the more remote tracks you may only see a vehicle once or twice a year. The harsh arid interior of Australia is no place for the pampered or foolhardy. It’s a rugged land worked by rugged blokes and their families.

All of the animals that live out in the west have, of course, adapted to the hot, dry conditions, and although it often looks like an extremely dry, desolate, lifeless landscape, it’s actually teeming with a myriad of wildlife. Each new day the cool morning air rings to a crescendo of bird calls. As the day warms up, hawks and eagles begin to circle in the thermals while lizards bask on rocks. The land’s nocturnal marsupials, pythons, and owls sleep soundly in their cool retreats.

Fierce snake: the world’s most venomous snake.

Drought one day, floods the next; central Australia is a land of contrast.

When looking at this habitat, it’s easy to see why the fierce snake “disappeared” for so long. The area where the species lives, Ashy Downs, or the Black Soil Plains of Central Australia, is treeless and arid, and the snake survives the extremes and harshness of its surrounds by living underground. Beneath the dry bare dirt of the plains is a subterranean labyrinth of cracks and rat holes.

The fierce snake doesn’t often venture outside, waiting until there is very little wind and dust, usually coming to the surface in the mornings between seven and ten o’clock when the temperature is a “cool” 32ºC (90ºF). Once it heats up over 90ºF the snakes slither back underground to the safety of their holes. Unless the climate and conditions are perfect you’ll never see a snake, not even a scale. When Dad and I first searched, many days went by before we spotted our first fierce snake—and then it got away.

My boyhood memories of this wide brown land start with a grazier’s homestead nearly two hundred miles from Birdsville. The graziers, Herb and Pearl, were our good mates, and Dad and I would religiously call in to the homestead for the traditional “cuppa” and a “yarn.” These people were the salt of the earth and they loved the land and its wildlife.

At night, we’d sit around a campfire and I’d listen in awe to Herb’s yarns of the deepest floods, the longest droughts, the biggest fierce snakes, the rarest mammals, and the harshest dust storms. We got on like a house on fire. But whenever I visited Herb and Pearl’s, I’d always be looking behind me. They had a pet feral pig named Piggy Wig which they’d raised from a porker. He was like the homestead watchdog and, unfortunately, he didn’t like me or Dad. I got bitten once before I learned to give him a wide berth and respect his space.

Piggy Wig. He was like the homestead watchdog.

One time I was scratching around the machinery shed chasing lizards when Piggy Wig decided he didn’t want me near his shed, so he commenced grunting his way toward me. I quickly shot up onto a bulldozer blade, where I sat in the scorching heat for a couple of hours, too scared to move. Once he’d put me up on the blade he waddled off a short distance into the shade for a dust-bath and a rest, waiting for me to come down. Not even the heat or my thirst convinced me to make a run for it. I was totally parched by the time Herb casually came to the rescue.

Most of the cattle properties out west are as large as some small countries. Herb was a keen pilot and used his small plane to cover the distances quickly and to muster his cattle.

I loved flying with Herb, and it was during these flights as a boy that I gained an understanding of the lay of the land and just how vast and arid it is.

But chasing snakes was our mission! Not just any old venomous snake, but the most venomous snake in the world. Dad’s Toyota Landcruiser 4WD was an all-terrain, snake-catching machine, fully rigged with all the essential gear.

Dad’s Toyota Landcruiser, set up as an all-terrain snake-catching machine.

Tracks in the sand-evidence of sand goannas.

We often camped back in the red sand dune country. The red sand dunes of Central Australia are a wonder of the world; they’re shaped by the winds and run in parallel lines often miles long. Imagine the fun I had playing and chasing lizards in this never-ending sandpit. I’d dive off the steepest edges then roll all the way to the bottom. What a thrill! Even Dad had a go—in a weaker moment, I should add.

Tracking was my greatest achievement. I could track in the sand, often catching and releasing a hundred lizards in an hour. One afternoon I tracked this huge sand goanna that had raided our camp while we were out chasing snakes. He led me nearly three-quarters of a mile through the bright orange-red sand, over four sand dunes, across a clay pan, and right up to his den—a perfect tunnel down to the moist, cool clay beneath the sand dune. I was sitting at the entrance waiting in ambush when I spotted fresh bird tracks…big bird tracks, the middle toe longer than my footprint—emus! So off I went tracking fresh emu tracks.

Heading into the huge orange glow of the west’s glorious, lengthy sunset, I was thinking to myself how fresh the tracks were and that I must be close. Sure enough, when I reached the knife-edged crest of an eighty-foot sand dune, there they were, catching grasshoppers in the spinifex at the base of a truly spectacular sand dune. Pulling out my grandfather’s binoculars, I focused on the seven flightless giants. I was intrigued by how many grasshoppers they were eating, and how the younger ones puffed out their chests and pranced around or ran at each other. I desperately yearned to go down and play with them but I’d learned valuable lessons about not approaching wildlife without purpose. Besides, it was an experience I couldn’t wait to get back and tell Dad about.