Auntie Angie Comes to Stay...
On boxing day we welcomed Auntie Angie into our midst for ten days... This was a surprise for Mikaela and John, that we had been plotting for a while, and was great to see the excitement on Mikaela's face particularly when she saw her little sister for the first time! Saturday we decided to head for some dangerous wildlife action, Aussie style! So we headed for Hartley's Crocodile Adventures, about half way between Cairns and Port Douglas. Awesome day. We got to see a crocodile show, a snake show, quoll feeding, cassowary feeding, and a plethora of other interesting animals. Of course always with a safe distance (or cage) between us and them. Learned some interesting bits and bobs too about some of the animals... I'll let the pictures talk and just give a little commentary on them... 
This was taken on the boat cruise around the lagoon... moments after this (female) croc took the chicken head (which is what you see) the big male croc came thundering across and body slammed the female! Lesson 1: Crocs are territorial. Lesson 2: Croc's like chicken heads enough to take a body slam for one! 
This is one of those birds that fiction would tell us brought Abbey and Lucy into our lives. I was there though, and I know differently. I have an expert witness who will testify to the same (Mez). Cool bird though. Didn't like being Stalked though if you'll pardon the pun... 
Angie and I played with this fibreglass croc that was a measly 7 and a bit metres long. Supposedly the biggest ever shot was an 8.6m beast in the 1950's by some famous Aussie woman who's name escapes me. Needless to say she was probably a tough lady. Between her and her husband they accounted for the slaying (or I guess back then it was called 'culling') of 10,000 of these beasts! 
Note the poncho. Actually it wasn't raining, Angie was doing an experiment to see if A: Other people would think she was a fashionista and follow her example and B: To see just how much one person can sweat in the heat of Nth Qld, as measured by drops of sweat forming on the inside of the plastic bag and the forehead. Unfortunately for science, she abandoned the experiment mid way through the day when the tally was a mere 16 drops. 
Koala gets included simply because he posed for the camera. Though i'm not sure if he was smiling at me or because he wanted to eat me... Drop bears are notoriously dangerous carnivores though and should note be confused with their cute, eucalyptus eating cousins. I can't tell the difference so i took this shot with a zoom lens so as not to get too close. Just incase. 
The blurry brown thing, popping it's head out of the other blurry brown thing is a spotted quoll, coming out of his hollow log for a chicken dinner. Quolls are small marsupials, a bit bigger than a cat. And because they live in Australia, they're a lot more vicious. The most well known such animal is the biggest of this family of animals, namely the Tasmanian Devil, who has a curious mode of locomotion, whipping up a tornado around himself to get from point A to point B. Lesson 3: Quolls, like crocs, quite like chicken dinners. Lesson 4: Even a nocturnal animal will be up for a midnight (day?) snack. 
Red Bellied Black snake. Classed as dangerously venomous. This means it will only kill old people and small children, unless it is in a bad mood. Which is most of the time. Must be the heat. It would suck to wear a black coat around all day in this kinda heat. Would certainly be enough to make me ratty! Though probably not ratty enough to eat a rat. 
Next we have a lace monitor. Not the hugest example we've seen, but he was very pretty nonetheless. Apparrently he has some cousins that were about 8 - 12m long and perhaps ate some of the early Australians (Aborigines that is). Back when Dragons roamed the world. As an interesting aside they had a perfect description for the swagger of a Monitor... the 'Lord-of-all-I-survey' walk. Very true. These guys pretty well have no predators, so they're never in any great hurry to get anywhere. 
Abbey had a go at chasing a bird, which ran, rather than flew away from her. She then turned her attention to hunting wallabies. Which she was equally as unsuccessful at. Running and squealing at the animal is clearly a tactic that will need to be shelved in order to get close enough to give them a hug. 
This is a dragon of some description, not a fire-breathing one but a tree hugging one (or rock in this case). I think it is a central netted dragon. 
These are a couple of (fat bellied) water monitors. I love that inquisitve look lizards give. 
Next we have a water dragon. 
Followed closely by the bearded dragon. 
And then we move on to the snake show... The show started by discussing the study of snakes (Herpetology!) Which though dodgy, sounds a completely different kind of dodgy to the reality of the snake studiers day to day life! Initially he talked about the differences between snakes and lizards (not the legs because there are legless lizards, and legged snakes!) Lesson 5: Snakes have no external ear but 'hear' (= feel) vibration. Therefore if you run they know exactly where to chase... Also there is no point screaming because they won't be scared of you - simply because they are, to all intents and purposes, deaf. Lesson 6: a python's prey is measured by its head size. The prey can be roughly ten times the size of the head (gotta love that dislocating jaw!). Lesson 7: Lizards have eyelids, snakes do not. Which could account for that freaky stare they give you. Note: if you just see a head poking out under a rock, get close enough to see the eyes, if it doesn't blink in say 45 minutes, it's a snake and you should run away very fast. Bearing in mind of course that the snake can track you by your vibrations. (Actually snakes generally dislike vibrations...) In the picture above the handler was playing with an inland taipan. Known as the snake with the most deadly venom on the planet. Locals will tell you all sorts of stories about Taipans and how fast they are and how you'll be bitten before you even know it was there and the very small chance you have of survival. The snake handler on the other hand, described this snake as the pussy cat of the snake world, said that it very rarely bites, and that no one has EVER died of a known taipan bite! Despite its reputation. 
The show actually started with the handler passing around a blue tongued lizard which Abbey was keen to pat like all the other wee kiddies there. She did this quite funny thing where she would put her hand out, then withdraw it, then back out again etc. Quite funny. Clearly there was curiousity with a healthy reservation there. The same was true of patting this water python which Angie got a photo with. 
There were some pretty birds there too inside an Aviary. 
The coolest of course is the kingfisher who has a novel method of nest building. They fly full speed at a termite mound and ram their beak in and do this repeatedly till they get deep enough for their eggs to be laid in the warmth of the nest and with a ready food source on hatching. Very cool birds. 
This Saltie's name is Louie and he's certainly not the biggest in the park at 4.2m long, but he is the one I got the best photo of! Love that reflection in the water and the smile... would not want to meet him too much closer than that. All the Crocs on display there are guys that have been 'problem' crocs - that is they're the ones that are especially good at what they do, namely killing things, so they get relocated. I wonder if they prefer living out their days eating chicken dinners or if they'd rather be 'back in the game' so to speak. Even if the alternative is a rifle? 
The three sisters (as we named them) are freshwater crocs, most distinguished by their pointy snouts and the fact that they don't grow nearly as big as their saltwater cousins, nor do they pose much threat to humans. Some old timers even report swimming in holes with the freshwater crocs. Though you'd want to be pretty certain it is a freshwater Croc! 
The croc show's star was called 'Al' and he expertly displayed the typical croc behaviours of shaking their heads from side to side to shake off loose bits of prey, the crocodile 'death' roll, which is simply designed to knock the prey off their feet so they can drag them into the water where they can hold their breath for up to 3 hours (most people would lose that contest after less than 3 minutes). Evidently they prefer fresh to stale meat, so the line about crocs stuffing people under logs to tenderise for a couple of days is a pile of bollocks - they would just eat you as soon as you stopped kicking. Their jaws have about 3000psi of closing pressure which would probably be similar to having a truck run your toes over for pressure! They don't move too quick over land though - about human jogging pace, so they are easy to outrun - just don't climb a tree - they can sit and wait at the bottom for 3 days for you to come down, or fall out! Most of the safety precautions are pretty simple. Stay well away from them, and only swim where the locals swim! Evidently their danger is highly inflated - Swans kill more people in an average year than a Saltwater croc, at 2.0 humans per year, Honey-Bees kill way more people. Incidently crocs kill an average of 1.8 humans a year, which the show host stated accounted for one tourist and one tasmanian!!!
This beautiful Cassowary is one of only a couple thousand of its kind and evidently absolutely necessary for the survival of the rainforests. A recent study apparrently showed around 50 species of rainforest tree, that had about a 20% germination rate for seeds planted independently, but a 99% germination rate for seeds that had been eaten and then shat out by a Cassowary. Cool bird again. Evidently all the hype about them being dangerous is again a pile of bollocks. There has only ever been one person killed by one and it was highly provoked and extremely unlucky - they do have powerful legs and can kick to shoulder height, supposedly driving their dagger like toes into you, but you'd have to approach a child protecting male and harrass him to get that kinda treatment. The chances of you even seeing one in the wild are so remote that it's an exceedingly unlikely scenario. Apparrently though they do both single and double leg kicks. Kinda like something out of street fighter was the impression i got, complete with subwoofer sound effects (they make a sound like a subwoofer which is picked up by other Cassowary via the big fingernail type contraption on top of their heads). 
This is a badly out of focus picture of a frill necked lizard - one of Aussies most famous looking critters, though obviously looks very different without his frills up! 
The last photo is of Abs and I getting up close and personal with a Koala which again provoked the same reaction as the blue-tongue and the python, with lots of big smiles of course. A real LIVE teddy bear! Delightful!
This was taken on the boat cruise around the lagoon... moments after this (female) croc took the chicken head (which is what you see) the big male croc came thundering across and body slammed the female! Lesson 1: Crocs are territorial. Lesson 2: Croc's like chicken heads enough to take a body slam for one! This is one of those birds that fiction would tell us brought Abbey and Lucy into our lives. I was there though, and I know differently. I have an expert witness who will testify to the same (Mez). Cool bird though. Didn't like being Stalked though if you'll pardon the pun... Angie and I played with this fibreglass croc that was a measly 7 and a bit metres long. Supposedly the biggest ever shot was an 8.6m beast in the 1950's by some famous Aussie woman who's name escapes me. Needless to say she was probably a tough lady. Between her and her husband they accounted for the slaying (or I guess back then it was called 'culling') of 10,000 of these beasts! Note the poncho. Actually it wasn't raining, Angie was doing an experiment to see if A: Other people would think she was a fashionista and follow her example and B: To see just how much one person can sweat in the heat of Nth Qld, as measured by drops of sweat forming on the inside of the plastic bag and the forehead. Unfortunately for science, she abandoned the experiment mid way through the day when the tally was a mere 16 drops. Koala gets included simply because he posed for the camera. Though i'm not sure if he was smiling at me or because he wanted to eat me... Drop bears are notoriously dangerous carnivores though and should note be confused with their cute, eucalyptus eating cousins. I can't tell the difference so i took this shot with a zoom lens so as not to get too close. Just incase. The blurry brown thing, popping it's head out of the other blurry brown thing is a spotted quoll, coming out of his hollow log for a chicken dinner. Quolls are small marsupials, a bit bigger than a cat. And because they live in Australia, they're a lot more vicious. The most well known such animal is the biggest of this family of animals, namely the Tasmanian Devil, who has a curious mode of locomotion, whipping up a tornado around himself to get from point A to point B. Lesson 3: Quolls, like crocs, quite like chicken dinners. Lesson 4: Even a nocturnal animal will be up for a midnight (day?) snack. Red Bellied Black snake. Classed as dangerously venomous. This means it will only kill old people and small children, unless it is in a bad mood. Which is most of the time. Must be the heat. It would suck to wear a black coat around all day in this kinda heat. Would certainly be enough to make me ratty! Though probably not ratty enough to eat a rat. Next we have a lace monitor. Not the hugest example we've seen, but he was very pretty nonetheless. Apparrently he has some cousins that were about 8 - 12m long and perhaps ate some of the early Australians (Aborigines that is). Back when Dragons roamed the world. As an interesting aside they had a perfect description for the swagger of a Monitor... the 'Lord-of-all-I-survey' walk. Very true. These guys pretty well have no predators, so they're never in any great hurry to get anywhere. Abbey had a go at chasing a bird, which ran, rather than flew away from her. She then turned her attention to hunting wallabies. Which she was equally as unsuccessful at. Running and squealing at the animal is clearly a tactic that will need to be shelved in order to get close enough to give them a hug. This is a dragon of some description, not a fire-breathing one but a tree hugging one (or rock in this case). I think it is a central netted dragon. These are a couple of (fat bellied) water monitors. I love that inquisitve look lizards give. Next we have a water dragon. Followed closely by the bearded dragon. And then we move on to the snake show... The show started by discussing the study of snakes (Herpetology!) Which though dodgy, sounds a completely different kind of dodgy to the reality of the snake studiers day to day life! Initially he talked about the differences between snakes and lizards (not the legs because there are legless lizards, and legged snakes!) Lesson 5: Snakes have no external ear but 'hear' (= feel) vibration. Therefore if you run they know exactly where to chase... Also there is no point screaming because they won't be scared of you - simply because they are, to all intents and purposes, deaf. Lesson 6: a python's prey is measured by its head size. The prey can be roughly ten times the size of the head (gotta love that dislocating jaw!). Lesson 7: Lizards have eyelids, snakes do not. Which could account for that freaky stare they give you. Note: if you just see a head poking out under a rock, get close enough to see the eyes, if it doesn't blink in say 45 minutes, it's a snake and you should run away very fast. Bearing in mind of course that the snake can track you by your vibrations. (Actually snakes generally dislike vibrations...) In the picture above the handler was playing with an inland taipan. Known as the snake with the most deadly venom on the planet. Locals will tell you all sorts of stories about Taipans and how fast they are and how you'll be bitten before you even know it was there and the very small chance you have of survival. The snake handler on the other hand, described this snake as the pussy cat of the snake world, said that it very rarely bites, and that no one has EVER died of a known taipan bite! Despite its reputation. The show actually started with the handler passing around a blue tongued lizard which Abbey was keen to pat like all the other wee kiddies there. She did this quite funny thing where she would put her hand out, then withdraw it, then back out again etc. Quite funny. Clearly there was curiousity with a healthy reservation there. The same was true of patting this water python which Angie got a photo with. There were some pretty birds there too inside an Aviary. The coolest of course is the kingfisher who has a novel method of nest building. They fly full speed at a termite mound and ram their beak in and do this repeatedly till they get deep enough for their eggs to be laid in the warmth of the nest and with a ready food source on hatching. Very cool birds. This Saltie's name is Louie and he's certainly not the biggest in the park at 4.2m long, but he is the one I got the best photo of! Love that reflection in the water and the smile... would not want to meet him too much closer than that. All the Crocs on display there are guys that have been 'problem' crocs - that is they're the ones that are especially good at what they do, namely killing things, so they get relocated. I wonder if they prefer living out their days eating chicken dinners or if they'd rather be 'back in the game' so to speak. Even if the alternative is a rifle? The three sisters (as we named them) are freshwater crocs, most distinguished by their pointy snouts and the fact that they don't grow nearly as big as their saltwater cousins, nor do they pose much threat to humans. Some old timers even report swimming in holes with the freshwater crocs. Though you'd want to be pretty certain it is a freshwater Croc! The croc show's star was called 'Al' and he expertly displayed the typical croc behaviours of shaking their heads from side to side to shake off loose bits of prey, the crocodile 'death' roll, which is simply designed to knock the prey off their feet so they can drag them into the water where they can hold their breath for up to 3 hours (most people would lose that contest after less than 3 minutes). Evidently they prefer fresh to stale meat, so the line about crocs stuffing people under logs to tenderise for a couple of days is a pile of bollocks - they would just eat you as soon as you stopped kicking. Their jaws have about 3000psi of closing pressure which would probably be similar to having a truck run your toes over for pressure! They don't move too quick over land though - about human jogging pace, so they are easy to outrun - just don't climb a tree - they can sit and wait at the bottom for 3 days for you to come down, or fall out! Most of the safety precautions are pretty simple. Stay well away from them, and only swim where the locals swim! Evidently their danger is highly inflated - Swans kill more people in an average year than a Saltwater croc, at 2.0 humans per year, Honey-Bees kill way more people. Incidently crocs kill an average of 1.8 humans a year, which the show host stated accounted for one tourist and one tasmanian!!!This beautiful Cassowary is one of only a couple thousand of its kind and evidently absolutely necessary for the survival of the rainforests. A recent study apparrently showed around 50 species of rainforest tree, that had about a 20% germination rate for seeds planted independently, but a 99% germination rate for seeds that had been eaten and then shat out by a Cassowary. Cool bird again. Evidently all the hype about them being dangerous is again a pile of bollocks. There has only ever been one person killed by one and it was highly provoked and extremely unlucky - they do have powerful legs and can kick to shoulder height, supposedly driving their dagger like toes into you, but you'd have to approach a child protecting male and harrass him to get that kinda treatment. The chances of you even seeing one in the wild are so remote that it's an exceedingly unlikely scenario. Apparrently though they do both single and double leg kicks. Kinda like something out of street fighter was the impression i got, complete with subwoofer sound effects (they make a sound like a subwoofer which is picked up by other Cassowary via the big fingernail type contraption on top of their heads). This is a badly out of focus picture of a frill necked lizard - one of Aussies most famous looking critters, though obviously looks very different without his frills up! The last photo is of Abs and I getting up close and personal with a Koala which again provoked the same reaction as the blue-tongue and the python, with lots of big smiles of course. A real LIVE teddy bear! Delightful! So a great day was had by all really! Even managed to squeeze in some croc for lunch, which not surprisingly (considering its diet) tasted a bit like chicken!
posted by Ryan and Mez at
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