Croc lovers’ warped priorities
A LARGE crocodile wanders up on a Cairns beach and sits there while tourists take selfies with it.
A large crocodile stalks a man and woman fishing in Mourilyan Harbour and continues to do so even though they move five times and try to scare it off by throwing sticks at it right beside the boat.
There are rumours of a large croc menacing residents of Russell Heads – but maybe not anymore after the recent discovery of a vigilante hit on a big specimen in that area.
One of the Far North’s most popular beaches at Port Douglas has been shut twice in six months due to crocs.
A huge croc was photographed recently sunning itself in Trinity Inlet, the playground of Cairns anglers, and authorities were alerted when a big one cruised close to a children’s playground on the Esplanade.
A Daintree crocodile bit a tourist who innocently wandered close to the water’s edge to film mudskippers.
You can add these encounters to reports in October that crocodile sightings in Queensland have risen 38 per cent in the past two years.
These figures were revealed in response to reports from Surf Life Saving Queensland that they are losing Nippers in North Queensland at a rate of knots because parents understandably don’t like the thought of their kids being torn to bits.
Struggling surf clubs have been teaching people to save lives for generations, and whole families get involved, often as a result of their kids joining Nippers.
But now we’re expected to just let the movement dwindle because our politicians are more scared of rabid anti-croc-culling campaigners than they are of people being eaten.
These campaigners say we all have to be “croc wise” and obey warning signs. But three-year-olds can’t read signs and sometimes signs get vandalised or destroyed.
When I mentioned to one keyboard warrior that kids like to build sandcastles close to the water where the sand is hard and that sometimes kids get away from their parents and make a beeline for the nearest water, all he said was parents needed to be more vigilant.
That’s the kind of mentality we’re dealing with: if a kid – by choice, accident or misadventure – wanders innocently down to the water at his local, suburban beach and gets killed, it’s the parents’ fault.
Wow … and our gutless Labor State Government is listening to these people?
Add in the poor sod left holding the boat in knee-deep water at the boat ramp waiting for his mate to get back from parking the trailer, or someone swimming in a freshwater stream with no signs to indicate the recent arrival of a killer croc, and it’s clear that action must be taken.
All the way from Port Douglas, to Palm Cove and Kewarra Beach near Cairns, Forrest Beach near Ingham and Townsville’s Strand, crocs are asserting themselves as the top hunter.
Many locals don’t like the thought of these man-eaters brazenly cruising around where we live, play and work, but again, the south-east’s large and ignorant voting bloc – combined with a vocal, abusive and hysterical procroc lobby – wield the most influence.
What do you think the reaction would be if a croc walked up on to Surfers Paradise beach?
The true idiocy appeared to shine through in pro-croc comments on social media that went strangely quiet when it was pointed out to them that Kewarra Beach wasn’t some far-flung stretch of sand in the middle of nowhere. It’s smack bang in the middle of Cairns suburbia.
People have said any vigilante killing of crocs is on the media’s head. But on whose head will it be if a kid is killed while building a sandcastle on Kewarra Beach?
The media shouldn’t be shamed into putting croc lives above human lives and neither should politicians.
There’s a very clear disconnect between the most virulent croc lovers and a basic acceptance of the sanctity of human life.
To them, people being ripped apart by crocodiles in suburbia is collateral damage to be dismissed with a pathetic: “Well, he shouldn’t have been throwing his cast net there.”
Our Labor politicians are allowing North Queenslanders to be held to ransom by the kind of people who believe crocs deserve more to live than humans, and that is as ludicrous as it is dangerous.