Crocolicous day out mate!
Whilst in Northern Australia I decided I needed a change of pace and thought a day spent with the natural fauna would be ideal and so off I headed to a crocodile farm.
Now having visited the alligators in Florida and having inturned at vet jobs uk, I was well aware of what to expect, or so I thought. Your average alligator is in truth pretty lazy, pretty chilled and not keen on doing anything that resembles hard work to get his hands on some food. Your salt water crocodile is however a completely different beast.
Salties, as they are known, are much larger and much more aggressive and man alive are they up for a fight.
The farm consists of numerous caged off areas containing a number of crocs with both dry land and wet areas. Most can be seen basking on the side of their pool keeping warm whilst others are in the water, barely visible and, even behind caged fences, they look very menacing.
A guide tells you all about their breeding program and how they go out and recover salties which wander into areas where they are not really wanted (think your garden swimming pool) and then they take you through to meet some of their ’friends’. I say friends because they obviously really love them and their work and this shines through.
Watching them get up close to the animals is both exhilarating and impressive whilst being at the same time extremely scary. At up 5 meters long and weighing close to a tonne these beasts are built to kill being essentially a massive muscle from teeth to tip of tail. Seeing a saltie go from still to attack in the blink of an eye is astonishing and clearly highlights how incredibly dangerous they are.
The visit was an absolute highlight of my time in the region and if you find yourself up in Cairns and beyond do yourself a favor, take some time out and go make friends with some of the locals.
Just don’t get too close.
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