Day 45, 15 August, Broome

Pam's instinct not to visit the crocodile park on the same day as the circus proved to be justified. I definitely would have been overexcited.

The crocodile park's next door to the caravan park and is one of two run by Malcolm Douglas.

'Detention Centre' would probably be a better name than 'park'.

Malcolm and his crew provide a really valuable service: Say you have a 6 meter salt water crocodile in your back yard, eating your chooks. You can give Malcolm a call and he and his crew will come and 'give it some counselling'.

The 'counselling' doesn't really concern itself with helping the animal 'get in touch with it's inner crocodile.' That's not required, as crocodiles have had 200 million years to do that and are quite 'in touch'.

No, he and his crew will 'counsel' the croc into a trap, or, if that's unsuccessful, they'll give it deep, deep sleep therapy (of the .303 variety).

Most of the animals we saw had been recruited through just this process.

The park had many varieties of alligators and crocodiles, but the salties were the stars.

We were reminded that a salt water crocodile is highly territorial. If removed from an area, it'll find its way back, no matter what's in its way. For fun, they let a 5 meter monster out of its cage at after all the tourists had left one night. (This story was a great incentive to leave promptly at closing time.) Apparently, next morning he was back in his own enclosure.

One mongrel aptly named 'Bluey' had come from a station on the Adelaide River. The station's owner had a habit of taking his favourite horse to the edge of the river for a drink at the end of the day's labours. Unfortunately, this was just where our star saltie liked to sit on the bottom digesting last year's tucker. The saltie took offense at having his personal space violated and one night climbed out of the river, travelled 500 meters to the barn (after knocking down a fence), grabbed the horse, killed it, dragged it back 500 meters to the river, took it underwater (to make sure it was dead) and left it on the bank. It didn't eat it. IT WASN'T EVEN HUNGRY. It was just nasty.

The guide left us with an interesting idea. In the event of a cyclone (which happen in Broome with fair regularity) the fences in the crocodile park would likely be blown down. The crocs won't starve, though. (That would be cruel and disrespectful to one of Nature's beautiful creatures.) No, the caravan park is less that 500 meters away, full of sucullent Victorian codgers.

We're leaving Tuesday.

Or sooner if the breeze freshens.