Jaws, redux

Adam Mattner showed up with a bandaged right hand. Nothing serious, he said, just a little nick from Burt the crocodile. Mattner is a crocodile handler who doubles as a guide, leading groups through Australia’s Great Outback, a vast swathe in the country’s desolate interior. I’d arrived in Darwin, the capital of Australia’s Northern Territory, the previous day and checked into the seafront Skycity Hotel. As is customary, I’d proceeded to the beach for a splash in the water, only to be dissuaded by the “No swimming” and “Beware of crocodiles” signs, and a gorgeous surf line eerily devoid of humans. I beat a hasty retreat, conjuring up bizarre visuals of sunbathing, hat-wearing crocodiles on the beach. The bandaged hand put things in perspective.

Darwin is in the Top End, Australia’s northernmost frontier. The vast national parks of the Outback provided the setting for the cult film Crocodile Dundee . Over the course of a week, I traversed swathes of forest and floodplains, crossing rivers, trekking in search of crocodile-free swimming holes, and learning how indigenous tribes interact with the land.

The Kakadu National Park is the size of a small country, a 19,000 sq km protected zone, riddled with rivers and home to Aboriginal culture. Hopping wallabies, golden tree snakes and even a lone Australian dingo roamed the floodplains, while massive brolga cranes and magpie geese flew up in great clouds. We joined our Aboriginal guide Hilton for a gentle boat cruise on the East Alligator River, which is, somewhat confusingly, filled not with alligators but crocodiles.

We sailed to Cahill’s Crossing, a submerged river crossing, where the water is shallow and only a few metres wide. A car lay at an awkward angle, half submerged in the water. Cahill is among Australia’s most dangerous river crossings, with a notorious reputation for saltwater crocodile attacks. Of Kakadu’s 10,000 crocodile population, nearly 400 live in this river alone.

As we sailed upstream, Hilton demonstrated how his community fashions hunting weapons and creates natural body colours using, for examples, stones. The river winds between dense pandanus and mangrove forest on one bank, and the ethereal landscape of Arnhem Land on the opposite side. Weathered sandstone rises up in stacks, forming spectacular structures. On the rock face, Hilton points out Aboriginal art drawn in natural reds and ochres. Barramundi fish, water lilies, and snakes are common elements in these drawings.

We disembarked at Arnhem Land, immensely conscious that we had spied a massive crocodile lurking in the water minutes ago. Hilton flings a handcrafted wooden spear in a perfect arc into the water, demonstrating how the indigenous communities hunt fish, crocodile, and other animals using tools made of hibiscus wood and twine.

While the day was spent trailing crocodiles in the water, at night the region’s star made it to my plate. At the Cooinda Lodge, the chef produced a bush-style Aussie dinner, where he’d taken the prawn cocktail to a whole new level by creating the crocodile cocktail. It arrived in a glass, tendrils of white meat with a salad, and tasted, as the chef unerringly put it, “like chicken-fish”.

In these parts, locals speak of the saltwater crocodiles, or “salties”, in an almost reverential tone. These humongous beasts, some nearly five metres long, primarily occupy freshwater, but also have salt glands that enable them to thrive in saltier habitats. In the Top End region, it’s more likely than not that any waterbody — ocean, river, or just a puddle by the roadside — harbours a saltie. Given the Aussie affinity for the outdoors, this has proved to be a challenge, necessitating careful manoeuvring of the natural habitat.

Every waterfall, rock pool, or beach is marked with swimming and crocodile safety boards. Over the course of a few days, I spotted more than my lifetime’s worth of salties and concluded that they are masters of disguise, hovering undetected beneath boats and lying camouflaged on riverbanks and roadsides.

So when Mattner said we were going swimming, I was, understandably, suspicious. We hiked a steep cliff to get to Gunlom Falls, a stunning waterfall and natural infinity rock pool on the edge of a mountain. Picnickers sat in the shade of gum trees on the banks, while a handful of people perched at the pool’s edge, gazing out at sweeping views of the bush. Eager to jump in but replaying several crocodile warnings in my head, I cross-checked the safety situation.

“Crocodiles can’t climb rocks,” Mattner said. The logic was sound. A glorious hour was spent feeling the weight of a waterfall on my back, and floating in a crystal clear pool, with views of the Kakadu National Park far below.

In contrast to the aggressive salties, the smaller freshies, or freshwater crocodiles, seem to have got the short end of the stick in Australia. “They don’t have the right teeth to eat humans,” said a local matter-of-factly, almost dismissively. Mattner maintained that it was safe to swim in freshie territory; that, at most, we might get a defensive nip if we annoyed them. To me, though, the thought of coming face to face with any crocodile while in the water, friendly freshie or scary saltie, is terrifying. Captain Hook got it absolutely right when he sang ‘Never Smile at a Crocodile’ .

Malavika Bhattacharya is a Delhi-based freelance travel writer