Chris Calcino Goons, a croc and lasting love

HE GIVES HER A KNOWING WINK AND CLIMBS DOWN THE JETTY’S STEPS, BRIMMING OVER WITH BRAVADO AND BARGAIN BIN PLONK. EASY AS YOU LIKE. ON TO A WINNER HERE, HE THINKS

MOONLIT corrugations of gently folding water slap at the pylons, their benign splashes punctuated by a freshly squeezed goon sack gurgling its last gasps.

“You’re a real dreamy chick,” he utters with glazed eyes aglow.

“Thing is, crocs up here don’t really like Aussie meat. “Too pickled, they reckon. “Goes down like a gobful of gumboot in Bundy Rum brine.”

The radiant object of his affections, a beautiful, caring and kind English backpacker with long blond hair, sits at the water’s edge, sipping from a plastic chalice of Coolabah’s finest. These locals are crazy, she thinks. But hey. Paddling with man-eaters: the convict colony’s equivalent to a peacock spreading its splendid plumage.

Suitably impressed she presses him on the issue and offers him a top up. It has been a long, humid night. “Yeah nah, I’m not pulling your leg, hey. It’s backpackers they want. Firm but tender, like a medium rare beef wellington,” Lee continues.

“Thing’s bloody infested but I could swim across there easy. Maybe for a smooch …”

Surely he won’t actually do it.

Even the suggestion is preposterous.

She was warned about the deadly fauna over here. Crocodiles, snakes, redback spiders, the eastern hairynosed earwig.

Even ravenous bears dropping from rainforest canopies.

“No worries, love. I’m going in,” he says, peeling off his singlet.

“To the other side and back, you little ripper. “You’ll give me a kiss but, right?” Sure, why not. Her last boyfriend was flat-out remembering Valentine’s Day, let alone sporting the monumental pellets required to plunge into the depths with a prehistoric man-gobbler.

He gives her a knowing wink and climbs down the jetty’s steps, brim- ming over with bravado and bargain bin plonk.

Easy as you like. On to a winner here, he thinks, as he propels himself deeper, deeper into the river.

Meatloaf’s I’d do Anything for Love clatters around the uncluttered expanse between his ears as he edges towards the halfway mark. SNAP! A bonecrushing blow sends an electric shock through his body as a column of steely teeth puncture pickled Australian flesh.

Instantly sober he writhes against the convulsing weight dragging him under, his own reptilian instinct kicking in as he deals the beast two blows of his own.

The second punch connects, pounding the brute’s pulpy eyeball and it slackens its jaw to slip away with bruised eye and ego.

Back on the jetty the scene is frenzied as the blond-haired backpacker watches her suitor flounder his way back with screams that could curdle custard.

She is howling now, too, with panic dissolving every last shred of her goon-induced calm.

Finally he makes it to dry land and is hoisted to relative safety with a rub- ber-flopped arm sending crimson stains across the water. “So how ’bout that kiss?” The year is 2053 now and all his wounds are healed.

It took a good month for the bones to knit back together, but he sports an absolute ripper scar and a sure-fire yarn to scab free schooners at the Goondi Hill Hotel.

There he is now, propped up at the bar telling his tale as a fresh batch of 18-year-olds ply him with beer and dinner-plate eyes.

“Channel Nine gave me seven-friggen-thousand bucks for me story. You young fellas are getting a bargain,” he says.

“Put it all on a house deposit, by the way.”

His head gets heavy as dusk turns to darkness. Earlier nights these days. His left leg’s gone a bit gammy and needs to be propped up every few hours to relieve the gout.

One eye on the clock, one on the door. Every night at nine.

In she walks, just as beautiful, caring, kind and English as ever, with car keys dangling from her hand. “Home time, love,” she smiles. Too right it is. Take that, Charles Darwin.