Salty

It has been so hot and humid lately that Willy doesn’t even turn on the hot water in the shower anymore. We headed to Hartley’s Crocodile Adventures for a day of fun. We went to Harley's Crocodile Adventures for some fun. The first show of the day was a Saltwater (Estuarine) Crocodile feeding. We arrived at the enclosure a few minutes early and could see the crocodiles start to stir as more people started to show up. They knew what time it was. They were just inches below the water but you could barely see them - guess that's why you're supposed to stay away from the water's edge even if you don't see any in the wild. Interestingly enough, the ranger said that almost 80% of Salties actually live in freshwater, so their name is a little misleading. The ranger teased the crocs a bit with food so we could hear how loud their "chomp" really was and then fed them fish and chicken (whole). There was a massive croc who was definately the dominant male of the group and towards the end of the show, he saw something going on between two other crocs at the other end of the pond. He quickly turned and swam across to keep the other crocs in line.

Hartley's has made their own 5 acre lagoon for more crocs, so we were able to get a boat tour around the lagoon. It was cool to see the crocs so active in their environement. The ranger fed the crocs by a pole, making them jump nearly the entire length of their body. Next was a tour of the croc farm and we got to touch some of the year old crocs. The last show was a crocodile attack show where they demonstrated the "Death roll" and "head shake" highlighting their agressive nature and importance of croc safety. On the way out we saw some lazy Koalas airing out their armpits because they were so hot. It was a fun day and we would recommend it to anyone. 
We headed back to Cairns to play some tennis at the caravan park - we were so bad that I'm pretty sure the tennis gods made it start raining so we would stop, but it was fun trying. We made homemade woodfire pizzas on our bbq with chicken, bacon, mushrooms, pumpkin, sun-dried tomatoes, onion, basil and feta to cap off the night. Later that night the security guard told us a story of exactly what we were just educated NOT to do. The highlights of his story included being ambushed by a croc while fishing, smacked it with a water cooler, and then held it up to show off to his buddy to get a picture, all with his 8 year old daughter watching. He’s not allowed to take his daughter fishing anymore.