The Killer Koala Kenneth Cook

It would never have occurred to me to mix them but I nodded solemnly. Nod solemnly is pretty well all you do when you're talking to a snake man because they never actually converse — they just tell you things about snakes.

Blackie was a travelling snake man. He travelled in a huge pantechnicon which had wooden covers on the sides. Whenever he found a paying audience—a school or a tourist centre—he would drop the wooden covers and reveal a glass-walled box the size of a large room. This was his snake house, inhabited by a hundred or so snakes ranging from the deadly taipans and browns to the harmless tree snakes.

Blackie was like all the snake men I've ever met—cadaverously thin, very dirty, extremely shabby and he didn't have a second name. I think he was called Blackie because of his fondness for black snakes, or perhaps because his eyes were jet black—he had the only eyes I've seen that were black. He looked as though his enormous pupils had supplanted his irises, but if you looked closely you could see the faint outline of the black pupils inside them. I tended to feel uncomfortable looking into those two round patches of black and the suffused and bloodshot eyes (all snake men have suffused and bloodshot eyes—I think it's because snakes bite them so often).

I met Blackie just north of Mackay in Queensland where we were both camping on a little known beach named Macka's Mistake; I don't know why it's named that.

I was trying to finish a novel and Blackie was doing something complicated with the airconditioning of his pantechnicon, so we were thrown together for about a fortnight and became firm friends.

Blackie was so good and confident with snakes that he imbued me with much of his own attitude. I would often go into his snake house, sit on a log and talk to him while lethal reptiles regarded us torpidly within striking distance, or slid gracefully and slowly away from the smell of our tobacco smoke.

Now and then a black, brown or green snake would slide softly past my foot and Blackie would say, 'Just sit there and don't move. It won't bite you if you don't move.' I wouldn't move and the snake wouldn't bite me. So, after a time, I became more or less relaxed with the snakes, provided Blackie was there.

Nothing would have induced me to go into the snake cage without Blackie, but I was convinced he could actually talk to the things, or at any rate communicate with them in some way which both he and they understood. It seemed to me at times fancifully possible that Blackie might have some drops of snake blood in his veins. Or perhaps the venom he had absorbed made him somehow simpatico with the creatures. Mind you, I did notice that the snakes had black eyes too, and that made me wonder.

There was only one other camper at Macka's beach, Alan Roberts, a fat and friendly little photographer who had set up a tent and was making a study of seabirds. He, Blackie and I would usually meet in my campervan for drinks in the evening.

Only the previous night, Blackie had been expounding to me and Alan the dangers of mixing alcohol and snakes. Of course, this took place over a bottle of whisky and I was considerably disconcerted when I called on him in the morning to find him unconscious in his own snake house, two empty whisky bottles by his side and his body festooned with deadly snakes.

The snakes were lying quite still, apparently enjoying the warmth of Blackie's motionless body. I assumed he was alive because of the snores that shook the glass windows of the snake house. But I had no idea whether he had been bitten and was in a coma, or had simply drunk himself insensible, or both.

The snakes resting on Blackie were, as far as I could make out: one taipan (absolutely deadly) two king browns (almost as deadly) a death adder (very deadly) three black snakes (deadly) and one diamond snake (harmless).

My first impulse was to run screaming for help, but there was nobody in sight, and if Blackie jerked or turned in his drunken or moribund torpor, at least seven deadly snakes would probably sink their fangs into him simultaneously. Then, no doubt, the other eighty or ninety variably venomous snakes would stop lying peacefully round the snake house and join the fray. Blackie's chances of survival would be slight.

I knew the snake house door did not lock. Normally when not in use it was covered by a wooden shutter, so I knew I could get in. But did I want to?

I didn't consider that in his present state Blackie would be able to provide his normal protection against snakes. Going in with Blackie like this would be worse than going in alone. A treacherous voice within me whispered that it would be better to run away and let Blackie wake up naturally. The snakes were used to him and he would probably instinctively act in the proper way with them.

Sadly, the treacherous voice wasn't convincing. Besides, I didn't know whether Blackie had already been bitten and needed medical help urgently.

I looked around for a weapon. Under the pantechnicon I saw a rake that Blackie used for clearing his snake house. I picked it up and cautiously and very slowly opened the door. There were several snakes between me and Blackie and I wasn't sure of their species. They all looked lethal. I poked at them gently with the rake and all of them, except one, resentfully slithered off to the other side of the snake house with no apparent intention except of going back to sleep. The one, a big king brown, raised itself on its coils and began hissing, throwing its head back to strike. I knew enough about snakes now to know that as long as I stayed the length of the snake's body away from its fangs, they couldn't touch me. Equally I knew that if I tried to pass this snake to get at Blackie, it could get to me.

I poked at it with the rake again and it struck, its fangs making a tiny ringing sound against the iron prongs. Blackie had told me that this sort of thing was bad for a snake's fangs. I didn't care. I poked at it again and it sank to the ground, wriggled over to Blackie, worked its way onto his back, then coiled again and began looking at me threateningly. It seemed much more agitated than before; no doubt its teeth hurt. The snakes already using Blackie as a mattress stirred fitfully, but didn't go anywhere.

A black snake detached itself from a group near the wall and came towards me. I banged it with the rake and it retired, probably mortally hurt. Again, I didn't care.

The king brown was hissing like a leaking steam pipe and the death adder appeared to dislike this. It made its way off, taking a path over Blackie's motionless head. There were still eight snakes on Blackie, seven of which were deadly.

I pushed tentatively at the king brown and it reared back, but didn't strike again. The movement disturbed the diamond snake and it went off to a quieter place. But that wasn't any real advantage as it was harmless anyway.

A couple more black snakes started circling the walls and I remembered that the door behind me was open. There was a reasonable chance that within minutes the population of the snake house would be ravening around Macka's Mistake beach. I preferred they should escape rather than remain in the snake house with me, but I didn't want them waiting just outside when, if ever, I managed to drag Blackie through the door. I banged the rake on the floor in front of them. They stopped, considered this phenomenon, then retreated. I went back and pushed the door almost to.

What was Blackie's great maxim about snakes? Handle them very gently and slowly and they'll never bite you. I eyed the waving, hissing, tongue-flicking king brown on Blackie's back and decided I didn't believe this. Possibly if this king brown would just vacate Blackie's back I might be able to prod the rest away, gently and slowly.

However, the king brown showed no inclination to move and it was so angry now I felt that if Blackie so much as twitched an ear it would have him. I was sweating with terror and the rake handle was slippery in my grasp. The tension in my body was so great I knew that if I didn't solve this quickly I would collapse or run weeping from the snake house.

The devil with treating snakes slowly and gently, I thought; you can also treat them quickly and violently. I swung the rake at the weaving king brown with every intention of decapitating it if possible. It ducked. The rake missed. The snake struck. It became entangled with the prongs and I was holding the rake in the air with the king brown on the end of it.

It sorted itself out quickly, coiled itself around the handle of the rake and began moving towards my hands. Convulsively I flung the rake away. It fell flat on Blackie's body, stirring the current inhabitants into a frenzy.

Fortunately, they all seemed to think they were being attacked by other snakes. They whipped up onto their coils and began threatening each other. Then, presumably trying for more advantageous positions, they all slipped off Blackie and began retreating towards the walls. Only one, the taipan, came near me.

All I could do was try the standard procedure of not moving and hope it would not notice that I was trembling uncontrollably. It went past and took up a position near the door.

Blackie was clear of snakes for the moment. He still hadn't moved. But now it seemed safe to try to wake him.

'Blackie!' I screamed and prodded him with my foot. He didn't stir. 'Blackie!' I screamed again and kicked him hard in the ribs. He still didn't stir.

All the snakes were awake and active now, but inclined to stay near the walls. The only immediate problem was the taipan against the almost-closed door. Obviously there was no chance of rousing Blackie, so I leaned down and grabbed him by the shoulders. He half turned and belched.

The alcohol-loaded gust of breath was the only thing I have ever encountered to approach a camel's breath for sheer noxiousness. The rake was still across Blackie's back. I grabbed it with one hand and grabbed him by the collar with the other.

The collar came away in my hand. I grabbed him by his sparse hair, but there wasn't enough of it to get a good hold. I grabbed him by the back of his shirt. A great patch of it came away, revealing a bony, dirty yellow back. There was not much left to grab him by, so I took him by the hand and began hauling. Fortunately the hand held together.

Blackie was no great weight and I began inching him across the floor, brandishing the rake at the taipan guarding the door and desperately aware of the sea of serpents to my right and left and behind me.

A carpet snake, quite harmless, wriggled within a handspan of my right foot and I hit it with the rake out of sheer spite. I was close to the door, just out of range of the taipan, which showed no sign of moving. I pushed at it with the rake but it ducked disdainfully and stayed where it was, weaving slowly and keeping its evil eyes fixed, I was sure, on my bare, exposed and palpitating throat.

I was desperately tempted to throw Blackie at the taipan and probably would have done, except that it's hard to throw a man anywhere when you've only got him by the hand.

I had, of course, been bellowing my head off for help for some minutes now and it came in the form of Alan Roberts, the photographer who, seeing through the plate glass what was happening, gallantly flung open the door to come to my help.

The violently pushed door caught the taipan fair in the back of the neck and squashed it against the wall. I went through the door, hauling Blackie after me.

'What the bloody hell . . .?' Alan was saying.

Blackie had somehow stuck on the steps of the snake house. The taipan, apparently undamaged by the door, was very close to his exposed ankle, which it was inspecting curiously. The other snakes were mercifully milling some distance away, hissing among themselves.

'Help me get him out!' I gasped. Alan went through my routine of trying to grab Blackie by the collar, hair and back of shirt and ended up with handfuls of collar, hair and shirt before he grabbed Blackie's other hand. Together we hauled him through the door and slammed it in the face of the taipan, which seemed anxious to follow.

Blackie folded into a grubby heap on the ground and I leant against the glass and tried to start breathing, which I had apparently stopped doing some time before.

'Has he been bitten?' said Alan.

'I don't know,' I croaked. 'Get an ambulance.'

Alan, a competent man who was not about to ask foolish questions, turned to go. Blackie jackknifed to his feet, opened the door of the snake house and tried to go back in.

Alan and I grabbed him by the shoulders and slammed the door.

'Blackie!' shouted Alan. 'What's wrong with you?'

Blackie, immobilised, stared at the closed door bemusedly.

'He's very drunk,' I said. I don't know whether he's been bitten or not.' I was beginning to doubt it. I didn't think people came out of snake poison comas quite so abruptly. If he was out of a coma.

'Blackie,' I said, 'are you awake? Has a snake bitten you?'

Blackie started to turn around, so we let him go. He stared at each of us in turn as though he was trying to work out who we were.

'Blackie,' I said again, 'has a snake bitten you?'

Blackie focused on me and said disdainfully, 'Snakes don't bite me.'

'I think he's just drunk,' I said quietly to Alan, and then to Blackie, 'better come up to my campervan and lie down for a while, Blackie.'

'Sure,' said Blackie, 'just lie down in here.' And he turned and tried to get in with the snakes again. Alan and I grabbed him.

'Come on, Blackie, come up to the van and have a sleep.'

But Blackie had looked through the plate glass and seen his beloved snakes rushing backwards and forwards or coiled and waving and hissing.

'Something's wrong with my snakes!' he roared, and began to struggle with us to get free.

'Blackie, Blackie,' said Alan, 'take it easy. You've had a few drinks.'

' 'Course I've had a few drinks,' said Blackie. 'Can't a man have a few drinks?'

'Of course you can, Blackie,' I said soothingly, 'but you were passed out with snakes all over you. We just hauled you out.'

Blackie looked at me closely. 'So that's why my snakes are all upset,' he said.

'That's right, Blackie.'

Blackie thought about that. 'Ah well,' he said after a while, 'I suppose you meant no harm. Don't do it again, though.'

And the wretched man pulled away and tried to get in the door again. Alan and I could hold him easily, but we weren't prepared to do it indefinitely.

'Now listen, Blackie,' I said firmly, 'just come over to my van and have a few hours' sleep and you can come back to your snakes.'

'I'm going back to my snakes now,' said Blackie. 'Get your hands off me.'

We let him go, but Alan slipped between him and the door. Blackie considered this new problem.

'I'm going in there,' he said quietly and threateningly.

'Calm down, Blackie,' said Alan reasonably.

Blackie took a wild and ineffectual swipe at him. Alan and I looked at each other helplessly. I mouthed the word 'Police?' behind Blackie's back and Alan nodded regretfully.

'Can you keep him out of there?' I asked.

'Yes,' said Alan confidently. I thought he could, too; Blackie was far too drunk to put up much of a fight.

The trouble was I didn't know where the nearest telephone was. As far as I knew I might have to go into Mackay, eighty kilometres away.

I drove at incredible speed down to the highway and was delighted to see a police patrol car go past at the junction of the roads. I sped after it with my hand on the horn and it stopped. I leaped out of my van and ran to the police car. Two solemn Queensland policemen, both fat, redfaced, without humour, eternally middle-aged, looked at me expressionlessly.

'I wonder, would you follow me?' I said breathlessly. 'I've got a friend who's very drunk who wants to sleep with his snakes.'

There was a long pause.

'What?' said the two policemen eventually, simultaneously.

'I've got a friend who's very drunk who wants to sleep with his snakes,' I said again, but this time I could hear my own words.

There was another long pause.

'Could you explain a bit more, sir?' said the driver policeman. Even then I could wonder at the talent of policemen for using the word 'sir' as an insult.

'Oh the hell with it, it's too difficult to explain. Just follow me, will you? It's urgent.'

I thought they probably would follow me, if not necessarily for the reason I wanted them to. I was right. They did and we arrived back at Macka's Mistake to find Blackie pinned to the ground with Alan Roberts kneeling on his shoulders. The snake house was still a whirl of activity. Blackie was shouting obscenities with considerable eloquence.

I don't say the policemen put their hands on their guns, but they looked as though they might any minute.

It was all too difficult to explain, so I just gestured at the strange tableau of Blackie and Alan in front of the snake house.

'What seems to be the problem?' said one of the policemen.

Blackie stopped shouting when he saw the uniforms. Alan let him go and he stood up, stared for a moment then looked reproachfully and unbelievingly at me. 'You called the cops,' he accused.

'What is all this?' said the policeman.

Blackie saved the necessity for an explanation by feebly trying to punch the policeman's nose. They took him off to Mackay and charged him with being drunk and disorderly.

Alan and I waited through the day until we felt he must be reasonably sober and then went down and bailed him out.

Blackie was silent until halfway through the journey back when he suddenly and tearfully asked, 'How could you do this to me?'

Alan and I explained the sequence of events to him.

'Is that true?' he said.

'Perfectly true, Blackie. We had to do it.'

'I can see that. Funny, I don't remember any of it.'

I tactfully made no reference to the two empty bottles of whisky.

'I'm really sorry,' Blackie said. 'Just goes to show, though—snakes and alcohol don't mix.'

Crocodiles and Sex

There are many phenomena in Nature for which I am grateful, but the strangest is that the sex life of a crocodile is exhausting.

I discovered this on a trip up the East Alligator River, which runs along the border of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. I had been lured there by Roger Huntingdon, a lecturer in one of the natural sciences at Sydney University. He had obtained a grant to study the great estuarine crocodiles that inhabit the coastline of northern Australia and he invited me to go with him. I had some passing acquaintance with crocodiles, but only the freshwater type, except for one salt water fellow I encountered in distressing circumstances after he was dead. Roger's offer sounded interesting, so I went along.

Roger was a slight, bushy-haired, bearded little man of about forty. He had very bright intelligent eyes and a large hooked nose. He looked somewhat like a bearded parrot—a likeness enhanced by his habit of wearing very bright floral shirts. He also had a high-pitched, chirpy voice and was rather excitable. Nevertheless, he was a very engaging and informative travelling companion.

He didn't take up much room in the boat, which was just as well, because I did—some call me obese but I think of myself as stout, say, a hundred kilograms—and we were carrying all sorts of radio gear designed to be clipped to the heads of co-operating crocodiles so that we could follow their movements. We also had a lot of nets and ropes with which to capture and tie up crocodiles with the help of bands of Aborigines whom we were to hire as required. There was also half a tonne or so of food and liquor and on the whole we were pretty low in the water.

It all seemed great fun as we puttered down the Alligator, through the petals of the wild frangipanni floating on the blue-green-brown surface, under the eyes of the dingo and buffalo on the escarpment.

Roger was passionate about crocodiles and bewailed the fact that until a few years before they had been hunted relentlessly for their hides. Fortunately, it seemed, they had been declared an endangered species and heavy fines had been imposed on people guilty of killing them. Their numbers had begun to rise and there were increasing reports of their taking cattle and Aborigines.

'Even two white truck drivers over near Broome,' Roger said brightly. 'They were sleeping by their truck and all that was found was the marks they'd made clawing the ground as they were dragged into the water. It was almost certainly a giant crocodile that got them.'

'Of course,' he added soberly, 'it's hard luck for the people involved, but it's encouraging to think the crocodile is on the increase up here.'

Enthusiasts are different from other people. Not better or worse, just different.

We had only been travelling a couple of hours when Roger spotted a likely place to find estuarine crocodiles. It was a gap in the cliff face of the escarpment which seemed to lead into a small lagoon.

'It's the sort of place they like for mating,' said Roger as he steered for the gap.

'Shouldn't we hire bands of Aborigines before we go chasing crocodiles?' I asked mildly. After all, Roger was the crocodile expert and no doubt he knew what he was doing.

'Might as well locate the crocodiles before we spend money,' replied Roger, reasonably enough, I thought at the time.

We went through the gap in the cliff. The water was very shallow at first, barely knee-deep, but then it fell away into black unguessable depths. We found ourselves in a backwater as big as a football field surrounded by high, sheer cliffs. There was one small beach area and, sure enough, on it was a large crocodile—about three metres long.

'Lovely! What luck,' said Roger as the creature slid quickly into the water. 'That's a nice female. Means the bull is almost sure to be here.'

I uncertainly eyed the black water and the meagre freeboard of our vessel and wondered whether the luck wasn't just a shade mixed.

'Well, now,' I said stoutly, 'off to get the band of stalwart Aborigines, eh?'

'I just want to look at that beach,' said Roger. 'There should be tracks on it that'll tell me what's in here.'

I looked again at the black water. Then I reached into my personal gear and took out my automatic shotgun.

'You won't need that,' said Roger impatiently. 'Besides, it's illegal to shoot crocodiles.'

'I'll just keep it as a security blanket,' I answered, checking the magazine to make sure the gun was loaded.

Roger ran the boat up onto the little beach and we stood up and studied the sand. It was covered with tracks which consisted of long shallow troughs made by crocodile tails with footmarks on either side.

'By jove, there's at least four females here,' said Roger enthusiastically. And you can see how big the bull must be.' He pointed at a couple of tracks made up of much bigger troughs and footmarks than the others. 'He could be six or seven metres long.'

'Well, a few Aborigines and on with the job, eh?' I fiddled with my gun.

'No hurry,' said Roger. 'You see, what happens is that the bull finds place like this and then waits until females come past. When one does, he forces it in here and keeps it here. By the time the mating season's over he might have eight or ten females penned up.'

'So what's he doing now—waiting on the bottom looking at us?'

'No, I shouldn't think so,' said Roger. 'He's probably out in the main stream waiting for another female.'

'Why do you say that?'

'Well, if he was in here he would probably have made his presence felt. Bulls tend to be a bit aggressive in the mating season.'

I thought for a moment. 'Roger,' I said very clearly, 'in view of the fact that we are in a very small, grossly overloaded boat, surrounded by cliffs a lizard couldn't climb, in a lagoon infested with female crocodiles, with a sex-mad bull about to return in a moment—in view of all that, don't you think it's time to get the bloody hell out of here?'

Roger looked at me, frowning. 'You know, you could be right,' he said. 'It could be quite dangerous in here.' So to my great relief we pushed the boat off the sand and headed for the gap leading back to the river.

'But what a find!' Roger was saying. 'We'll get back here with some helpers and net the whole place . . .'

We were almost at the entrance to the lagoon when it seemed to blow up in our faces. Great spurts of water rose high in the air. Vast clouds of spray swept across us. Small waves perilously rocked our boat. Strange black shapes were writhing in the watery turmoil ahead and there was a succession of mind-shattering bellows of such force and ferocity that they seemed to come from a creature not of this earth.

Roger turned the boat around, which was the only thing to do, because a battleship would have hesitated to sail through that maelstrom.

'What the hell?' I said, although I had a pretty good idea.

'Crocodiles mating,' said Roger excitedly. 'He's just caught a new one and he's breaking her in. He needs that shallow water in the entrance for that.'

Roger stopped the boat in the middle of the lagoon and we looked back at the watery love nest. You couldn't see much except vast volumes of water splashing up from the surface. It was as though somebody had plunged a huge kitchen mixer into the entrance to the lagoon and turned it on. The only evidence of crocodile was the occasional glimpse of a huge black shape flailing away. They were obviously at it hammer and tongs.

Roger was rummaging in his gear for a camera. 'Oh, what luck, what luck!' he was chirruping. 'I don't think anyone's seen this before—not in Australia.'

'How long do they take?' I said practically.

'I don't know,' said Roger happily. 'That's the point—we'll find out.'

'I mean, does it take minutes, or half an hour, or what?'

Roger was clicking away with his camera. 'I just don't know. Lots of animals couple for an hour or more.'

A terrible bellow rolled over the lagoon, rebounding off the cliff walls.

'The tape recorder,' muttered Roger. 'Where did I pack the tape recorder?'

'Roger,' I said gently, 'how do you propose to get us out of here?'

'We couldn't possibly go before they finish. We have to photograph what we can, and record it. It's a most brilliant stroke of luck,' he said.

'Roger,' I said, with a great effort keeping my voice low and level, 'we couldn't possibly go anyway. Nothing could get through that storm of reptilian frenzy and I at least can't climb those bloody cliffs.'

Roger, realising at last that I was genuinely disturbed, stopped fiddling with his tape recorder and stared at me with his bright bird eyes. 'You're not nervous, are you?'

I was standing in the stern clutching my shotgun to my breast, my ample flesh shaking with fear. 'Nervous? I'm bloody terrified!'

Roger contemplated me quietly, then shook his head regretfully. 'Well, that's hard luck,' he said, 'but we can't get out of here anyway, so we may as well enjoy it and learn what we can.' And he turned back to his recorder. As I said, enthusiasts are different from other people.

'Roger,' I said, 'don't you think we should at least get up on the beach? I mean, if those bloody things get any more passionate the waves will swamp us, quite apart from what will happen if they come this way.'

This made sense to Roger and, after taking a few more pictures and recording a few minutes of bellowing and splashing, he took the boat onto the beach.

At my insistence we dragged it up almost to the cliff face.

'Why?' asked Roger.

'So we can get behind it if the crocs feel like joining us on the beach.'

'That's not very likely,' said Roger. 'Still, I suppose it's a reasonable precaution.'

So we squatted behind the boat under the blue, hot, northern winter sky, me clutching my shotgun and Roger clicking his camera while the crocodiles kept at it enthusiastically. At least they'd need a sleep after this, I thought.

'What's all the fuss about?' I asked Roger. 'I wouldn't think either of them was enjoying it much.'

'No,' said Roger, lapsing into a pedantic style of speech. 'The female crocodile is seemingly very reluctant to mate. The male has to force her and she fights every inch of the way. It's probably some natural selection process whereby only the biggest and strongest males get to fertilise the female. In effect, crocodile copulation is straight-out rape.'

There was a quick succession of even-louder-than-usual bellows from the mating site. I thought the bull may have achieved his end or else the female had discouraged him forcibly. Either had happened, because the water suddenly became quite still.

'Now, I wonder where he'll go?' mused Roger.

He didn't have to wonder long. The thing emerged from the water thirty metres from where we squatted. It was enormous. At first we saw only the head, mottled black and brown, wet and gleaming in the sunlight, uncannily evil eyes peering remorselessly at me, vast teeth just visible under the rubbery lips, black nostrils seeking the scent of blood. Slowly the short stumpy forelegs appeared, hauling the rest of the wide scaly mass clear of the water. It just kept coming out. Metre after metre of lethal crocodile. It must have been eight or nine metres long.

'What a beauty,' breathed Roger.

I slipped the safety catch off my shotgun.

Roger grabbed my arm. 'Hey,' he said, 'that's a protected species.'

'So am I,' I replied shortly.

'But he's not hurting us,' said Roger.

'No, but he doesn't look friendly.'

'I positively forbid you to shoot,' said Roger severely.

He needn't have worried; I wasn't going to. A 12-gauge shotgun would kill a dinosaur a metre away, but our crocodile was twenty metres away and the shot would be as damaging to his scaly hide as a handful of dried peas. I had brought the gun in case it was needed in the boat when the range would be point blank. Here I would have to wait until the creature's breath was stirring my hair.

'I don't think he's necessarily going to charge us,' said Roger, whose voice had unaccountably dropped to a whisper.

As though confirming Roger's thoughts, the crocodile sank onto its belly with a great sigh of repletion and lay still on the sand. So it wasn't a case of bed to board, or not immediately, anyway.

'There, we'd better go now,' said Roger.

I was fast losing my respect for experts. The beach was very narrow. To drag the boat out, we would have to go within spitting distance of the crocodile. Even if I'd had the spitting talents of a llama I wasn't going that close.

'Listen, Roger,' I said, 'I suggest I fire a shot over his head to see if I can get him to go away.'

Roger considered this with his head on one side, like a parrot contemplating an unusual seed. 'Yes,' he said at last, 'crocodiles aren't sensitive creatures. You wouldn't shock him too much. But make sure you don't hit him.'

I pulled the trigger.

The sound in that rock-walled canyon was mind-destroying, and the echoes rocketed backwards and forwards for seconds. The crocodile didn't move. It didn't even blink.

'I think it's gone to sleep,' said Roger. 'We'll be able to get past it.'

'Roger,' I said, 'can those things move fast on land?'

'Oh, yes, very fast, for short distances.'

'Well, we'd only be a short distance from it.'

'Yes, I see your point,' said Roger petulantly. 'Then there's nothing to do except wait until it goes away.'

He began taking pictures of the crocodile.

'Roger,' I said, and I was whispering now, 'I suggest I fire a shot into that animal's body.'

'Oh, no!' Roger was horrified. 'You mustn't.'

'Roger, at this distance buckshot will hardly sting an animal that's draped with the equivalent of armour plate, but it might make him move far enough away for us to get out of here.'

'No,' said Roger firmly. 'I absolutely forbid it.'

'You might forbid it, Roger, but I am a free agent and I am going to do it.'

'It's against the law!'

'I am prepared to act criminally in the circumstances.'

'I will report you to the authorities.'

'Report away, Roger, but block your ears now.'

'I want it noted that I object strongly to this course of action.'

'Noted,' I said, aimed and fired.

Smitten by the full blast of 12-gauge pellets on its side, I won't say the crocodile merely raised a laconic eyebrow, but it gave that impression. However, it did lumber to its feet and ponderously waddle over to the far side of the beach where it subsided quietly again.

'I believe you have mortally wounded it,' said Roger.

'I hope so, but I doubt I've even scratched it,' I said testily. I was almost as weary of crocodile experts as I was of crocodiles.

'So what do you propose to do now?'

'If we go down the far side of the beach we wouldn't have to go within forty metres of that beast. How fast can it cover forty metres?'

'I don't really know,' said Roger, intrigued by scientific speculation. 'I imagine he'd be slowing down at the end of it. It'd be fascinating to see.' I was getting even wearier of crocodile experts.

We dragged the boat to within five metres of the water before the crocodile began to charge.

It was indeed a fascinating sight. It seemed to jack itself quite high in the air on its stumpy legs and raced across the sand like a lizard.

I dropped my hold on the boat and grabbed the shotgun.

Roger dropped his hold on the boat and grabbed his camera.

He stood squarely in front of me, clicking away at that charging mass of primeval ferocity—quite prepared to die to get the world's first front-on picture of a charging crocodile.

I wasn't. I moved to one side and started shooting.

'Stop! Stop! You'll hurt it!' screamed Roger.

The crocodile, racing through a hail of pellets, looked singularly unhurt.

I kept firing. I had plenty of cartridges in the magazine, more than I would have time to use.

I suppose the crocodile's charge lasted mere seconds, but they were the sort of seconds that seem an hour long and I was actually aware of the clicking of Roger's camera, the rushing sound of the crocodile's claws on the sand, even through the deafening, repeated blasts of the shotgun I could hear Roger screaming all the time, 'Stop! Stop! It's a protected species!'

The shotgun pellets must have started to take effect when the crocodile was almost on us, because he abruptly stopped and rose onto his hind legs, towering far above us, a horrifying spectacle, and let loose a terrible bellow.

Bloody Roger walked two steps forward to get a close-up and stood directly between me and the crocodile.

I had three choices. I could shoot Roger out of the way so I could get a clear shot at the crocodile. (Most attractive.) I could stun Roger with the shotgun so I could get a clear shot of the crocodile. (Too tame, considering.) I could throw down the gun and run screaming. (Most likely.)

I dithered. Roger took some more photographs. The crocodile bellowed a few more times. It did not seem a situation that would solve itself.

Suddenly Roger turned his back on that towering, raucous, evil mass of armour and teeth and began walking towards the boat.

'Come on,' he said, 'I've finished the roll.'

I walked backwards after him, finger on the trigger. The crocodile went on posturing for a while, then sank to the ground and seemed to go to sleep.

'You needn't have worried,' said Roger as we motored out of the lagoon. 'It's most unlikely a crocodile will really go through with an attack just after mating. He's far too tired, you see.'

I rapidly developed an indisposition that forced me to leave the expedition before we had any more encounters with crocodiles.

The Killer Koala

I do not like koalas. They are nasty, cross, stupid creatures without a friendly bone in their bodies. Their social habits are appalling—the males are always beating their fellows up and stealing their females. They have disgusting defensive mechanisms. Lice infest their fur. They snore. Their resemblance to cuddly toys is a base deceit. There is nothing to commend them.

On top of all that, a koala once tried to do me a very nasty mischief.

A small island named Kudulana about ten kilometres off the coast of Tasmania used to maintain a large population of koalas. Then somebody introduced sheep to the island, cleared too many trees, and suddenly there weren't enough of the right sort of gum leaves and the koalas were in danger of dying out.

A National Parks and Wildlife field officer named Mary Anne Locher was appointed to the task of rounding up the koalas and shipping them to greener pastures on the mainland. She invited me to help her, and on the grounds that there is a story in everything, I accepted.

Mary Anne Locher was rather like a koala herself in appearance. She was short, fat and round and had fluffy brown hair which she wore quite short, and her ears stuck out through it. I suppose she was about fifty at the time, a little older than I.

She always wore brown overalls and these, aided by the effect of her button nose and bright brown eyes, increased her similarity to a koala. Her voice was soft and slightly sibilant and she gave the impression that if you poked her tummy she would squeak. Unlike a koala, she was very pleasant and gentle.

At that stage I was not as corpulent as I am now, but nevertheless I was a well-fleshed man. That is to say, I could tie up my own shoelaces without much difficulty, but I was not athletic.

The unkind might have thought that Mary Anne and I were a slightly comical-looking pair as we left the ferry at Kudulana, one tall and round and bearded, the other short and round and fluffy-haired, each carrying a large, long-handled net and wearing identical brown overalls, for I had borrowed a departmental pair to wear on the job. As the ferry driver unloaded the wooden slatted cages that were to hold our catch, he went so far as to suggest that our task would be made easy because the koalas would fall out of the trees laughing.

To catch a koala, all you do is startle it so that it jumps or falls off its branch, and then you entrap it in your net. At any rate that's what Mary Anne told me. She didn't mention that it only works with co-operative koalas.

We stacked our gear, camping equipment, medical kit and the cages near the wharf and went koala hunting.

The trees on Kudulana are all very small and spindly and we had no trouble locating the koalas. There were only twelve, and they were in a grove of eucalypts around a large deep pool surrounded by ferns. They were all nestled in forked branches at the tops of the trees. But the trees were only three or four metres high, so the koalas were well within reach of our long-handled nets.

All Mary Anne and I had to do was get them loose, catch them in our nets, then transfer them to the wooden-slatted cages. In theory.

The koalas, furry balls with their heads tucked into their stomachs, didn't seem remotely interested in our presence.

'OK, we'll try that fellow first,' said Mary Anne briskly, pointing to a largeish koala nestling in a fork not much higher than I could reach. 'You frighten him and I'll catch him.'

She raised her net so that the mouth was just under the koala and stood poised, waiting to see which way the koala would jump. I held my net ready as a backup.

The koala seemed to be asleep, and I wondered for the first time just how one went about startling such a lethargic creature.

'Should I poke it with my net?' I asked Mary Anne.

'No, that'll just make it hang on. Shout.'

I had no idea in what terms one shouted at koalas, but I did my best.

'Boo!' I cried.

The koala didn't stir.

'Boo! Boo!' I shouted, as loudly as I could.

The koala opened one eye. Surprisingly, it was bloodshot. It looked at me for a long level moment, then wearily closed its eye again.

'It doesn't startle easily,' I said.

'No,' said Mary Anne. 'Try shaking the tree.'

I laid down my net, grasped the tree—which was very slender, no more than a sapling, really—and shook it violently.

The koala opened both its red-rimmed eyes and looked down on me malevolently. Then it applied a defensive device common to most arboreal marsupials. My hair, beard, face and shoulders were drenched with foully acrid fluid.

'Oh, sorry,' said Mary Anne, 'I should have warned you about that.'

I did my best with a handkerchief while the koala, apparently satisfied with its work, closed its eyes and went back to sleep.

'Why don't we push the bloody thing off the branch with our nets and catch it on the ground?' I said when I was more or less dry, but still smelling vile.

'You can't dislodge a koala once it's got a hold on something. They've got a grip of iron.'

'Well, what are we going to do? Nothing short of a bomb is going to startle that creature.'

Mary Anne thought. 'Could you climb that tree?'

I looked at the tree. It wasn't very big, but it would hold my weight and the koala wasn't far up.

'Yes,' I said, 'I think so.'

'Then go up and shout in its ear. Don't touch it. It'll probably jump when you get near.'

With considerable effort I hauled myself to the base of the branch in which the koala was snuggling. I wasn't much more than my own height above the ground, and I could have reached out and touched the koala, which was not far from my head. I kept my head carefully away from the little beast.

'Boo!' I shouted.

The koala took no notice. I edged closer along the branch.

The branch broke. Branch, koala and I dropped abruptly into the thick ferns below.

The koala landed on its back. I landed spreadeagled on the koala. The koala was out of sight beneath my considerable bulk, but I knew it was there because it was growling and snorting and trying to dig its way to freedom through my yielding flesh.

It was an extraordinary experience—down in those ferns, winded, able to see nothing but fern fronds, half-stunned so that I couldn't co-ordinate myself, with that hard-muscled, surprisingly large fur-covered length of malevolence trying to disembowel me.

Where the hell was Mary Anne?

In fact she was running around to the other side of the patch of ferns to catch the koala when it came out.

Now, koalas have another protective device, apart from the one they use on you from a great height. They cling to the belly of their oppressor and simply hang on with tooth and claw. It's a mechanism probably designed to work on dingoes. Once the koala is clinging to the dog's underside, the dog can't get at it with its jaws. I gather that in these circumstances the koala is quite prepared to hang on until the dingo collapses.

I didn't know this at the time. It wouldn't have helped if I had.

The koala evidently gave up all hope of escape and decided on the anti-dingo defence. It was upside down in relation to me and its back claws grasped my chest and dug in. Its front claws grasped my thighs and dug in. Its head went between my legs and its teeth dug into my crotch.

Fortunately a koala's mouth isn't very big. But it's big enough.

I screamed.

'What's happened?' called Mary Anne, out of sight.

'It's got me!' I bellowed, rolling over on my back and clawing at the koala with both hands. It rolled with me and clamped its hold tighter—all its holds.

I screamed again and started pummelling the brute with my fists. It was like pummelling fur-covered wood and made as much impression. The thing had muscles fashioned from some substance far harder than any animal tissue ought to be.

Again I screamed and I could hear Mary Anne crashing through the ferns towards me.

The koala, presumably thinking I had reinforcements coming, gripped harder still at all points.

It was growling like something demented, which it was, of course, and its backside was almost in my face—even my peril in no way diminished the frightful stench of the creature.

Mary Anne's head came in sight over the ferns. I was thrashing and clawing in a tangle of fern fronds and she couldn't see exactly what was going on beyond the fact that I had the koala and the koala had me.

'Careful you don't hurt it,' she called. I would have laughed in different circumstances.

'Get it off!' I gasped.

'Never get him off now,' she said vexedly, 'I'll have to sedate him.' And the bloody woman trotted off to the wharf to get her medical kit.

'Won't be a minute,' I heard her call as she disappeared through the ferns. 'Just lie still—don't worry, he won't let go now.'

That wasn't my worry at all. 'Mary Anne!' I roared, 'The brute has got me by the . . .' but she didn't hear me.

There was no way I could lie there until she came back, with that creature vigorously trying to desex me.

I struggled to my feet complete with koala and tried to run after her.

Ever tried to run with a koala's claws in your chest and thighs and its teeth in your crotch? It's not possible.

I was very close to tears of rage, pain and frustration. I floundered through the ferns and tried barging into a tree, koala first. All I did was drive tooth and claw further in. I tried falling on the damned thing. I winded myself.

On all fours now and near collapse, my disintegrating mind suddenly grasped the fact that I was on the edge of the pool in the centre of the koala-haunted grove of trees.

With a manic cry of hope I scuttled forward, took a deep breath and flung myself in, complete with koala.

The water was blessedly deep and we went down like stones.

I didn't know how long a koala could hold its breath but as far as I was concerned we were both staying down until the koala let go or we both drowned.

Unfortunately, it seems that koalas can hold their breath indefinitely.

The koala was a dead weight holding me down and we stayed in those brown dark depths for what seemed like half an eternity. The pain in my bursting lungs began to equal my other pains.

Eventually, I realised that there was no need for me to have my head under water. It may seem I was slow in reaching an obvious conclusion but if you've never been submerged in a bush pool in the clutches of a furious koala, you can't appreciate how difficult it is to think clearly in the circumstances.

I struck for the surface, got my head out, breathed deeply and gratefully and set about trying to throttle the koala.

Koalas are very hard to throttle, particularly when they have the sort of grip on you this one had on me. But I tried hard, completely disregarding the fact that it was a member of a protected species.

The koala seemed determined to die under water with my fingers around its neck. That was all right by me, as long as it died quickly.

Then, even through my pain, I had the terrible worry that a dead koala might not loosen its grip. Would I need surgery to detach me from this malign beast?

Then the beast gave up—a good twenty minutes, I swear, after it was first submerged, although Mary Anne has claimed she was away less than a minute. Time is, of course, relative.

The koala let go and surfaced near my face. Its toy features were expressionless, but it coughed and growled viciously and I backed away fearfully.

A gleam of contempt seemed to appear in its bloodshot eyes and it turned and swam expertly to the edge of the pool, clambered out, trundled across to a tree, climbed it, looked down at me bleakly, and went to sleep, dripping water.

I climbed out of the pool.

Mary Anne came back and expressed surprise that the koala had let go and asked why I was all wet.

I said I would explain later and went off into the bush to examine my person.

The overalls I was wearing were of very thick cloth and no serious damage had been done. No thanks to the koala.

Mary Anne and I eventually caught all the koalas on the island and set them free on the mainland, but I didn't carry out the task with good grace. I'll never go to the aid of the brutes again.

I do not like koalas.

One Hundred Stubbies

To understand how this could happen, you have to know something about where it happened—Coober Pedy, an almost impossible town in the arid centre. Coober Pedy is an opal mining town. The name is Aboriginal for 'white man in a hole'. The 'hole' refers to the mines and to the houses, which are caves dug into the sides of low hills. In the summer the temperature averages around 50 degrees Celsius. You spend most of your time underground or in a pub, or you die.

I had driven up from Adelaide in an airconditioned car and I thought I was going to die.

I saw Coober Pedy in the distance as thousands of tiny round bubbles in the shimmering desert heat haze. Soon these bubbles resolved themselves into the waste piles from the opal mines that stretch endlessly out from the town in all directions.

The whole area looks as though it is infested by the termites that build those huge nests of mud. Many of the mines are deserted and local legend has it that they contain the bones of reckless men who have welshed on gambling debts or tried robbing mines. I never actually heard of a skeleton being found.

The sight of the pub in Coober Pedy automatically brought my car to a halt. I needed cold beer and lots of it. The heat out there is almost solid and you can feel it dropping on your head when you step out of the car. I trotted across to the pub, my whole being yearning for beer, totally unaware that I was about to witness an event that would put me off beer drinking for months.

The pub was moderately full of pink men. Almost all the men in Coober Pedy are pink because they are opal miners and the pink dust of the mines becomes ingrained in their skins. Or perhaps they never wash, because the water there is pretty foul stuff.

I ordered beer, found it deliciously cold as beer always is in outback Australia—often the only evidence of any form of civilised living—and began tuning in to the talk around me, as is my habit.

Two pink men quite near me were having a conversation which was absurd, like most conversations in outback pubs by the time everyone has had five beers. The two of them were leaning on the bar peering earnestly into each other's deep-etched faces. Like two grotesque dolls, they carried on a nonsensical argument.

'He can.'

'It'd kill him.'

'It'd take four hours.'

'It wouldn't kill him. Nothing would.'

I leaned closer. Their voices were beginning to hit an hysterical note. Like buzzsaws, their shouts rose above the hubbub of the other drinkers. They were obviously used to yelling at one another fifteen metres underground with jackhammers going full blast.

'A hundred stubbies in four hours. Do you reckon that would kill him?'

'It'll kill anybody.'

'He's not anybody.'

They stared into each other's faces, the importance of the topic growing in their minds as the beer ran down their throats.

'Why are you so bloody sure?'

'Because I'm bloody sure.'

One of them was almost middle-aged, with grey hair all over his exposed shoulders. At least, it would have been grey if he had washed off the pink dust. His face was dulled and brutalised by years of grubbing away in the ground all morning and drinking beer all afternoon. Or perhaps he had been born with a dull and brutal face.

His companion was younger, probably not thirty, a little fat but with the heavy shoulders and arm muscles of the opal digger. If men keep on digging in the ground for opal for a few generations, they will probably develop forequarters and arms like wombats. This younger man looked like a hairy-nosed wombat because of the three-day growth on his face. Not exactly like a wombat, though, because a wombat has some expression on its face if you look hard enough, while this character's face was just a blob of pendulous blankness. With its pink dusted stubble, it looked like a discarded serving of blancmange growing a strange mould.

'Well, if you're sure, will you bet on it?'

'Sure I'll bet on it.'

You couldn't tell who was speaking because their voices sounded identical, like knives scraping on plates at an unbearably high volume. But you could tell the sound was coming from them and gradually a pool of silence was forming around them as the rest of the bar tuned into their conversation.

'What do you reckon, Ivan?'

Now you could see who was speaking because the older man turned and addressed himself to the drinker alongside him.

Ivan turned slowly and I realised I was looking at a monster. He stood barely a metre and a half high and was almost as wide across the shoulders.

His chest, black-singleted and covered with dust, stood out like a giant cockerel's, a vast billow of muscles with dark streaks running over the pink dust as the sweat made its own little rivers. One great arm hung disproportionately low by his side, the other rested on the bar with an enormous pink hand almost totally concealing a glass of beer. His hair was short and closely cropped and he carried a comb of bristles over a face that for one mad moment made me wonder whether it is possible to cross a crocodile with a hippopotamus.

This was a face that displayed complete lack of interest and malice, with a blank complacency that made it obvious no thought had ever disturbed the brain that nestled just under that absurd cockscomb of hair.

He was wearing shorts, and two massive legs, not unlike those of a hippopotamus except that they were pink and hairy instead of grey and wrinkly, propped up his body. It was as though the body was resting on the legs rather than being joined to them, because he seemed to have no waist; he was tree trunk-thick all the way down until suddenly he had legs. The junction was concealed by the baggy shorts, but I got the impression that the legs might walk away at any moment, leaving the body standing there.

'What do you reckon, Ivan? I reckon you could drink a hundred stubbies in four hours.'

' 'Course I could,' said Ivan. His voice was flat and deep, almost pleasant by comparison with those of the other two, but only by comparison.

'There,' said the older man, turning to his companion as though everything had been proven.

'Bet you he couldn't.'

'Bet then. Go on, bet!'

'What do you mean, bet?'

'I mean what I say. What'll you bet he can't drink a hundred stubbies in four hours?'

'Bet you five hundred bucks.'

The older man thrust his hand into his hip pocket and brought out a wad of notes. He counted ten fifties on to the counter. The younger man looked on impassively, while Ivan, losing interest, turned back to his pint.

'Match that.'

The younger man, having waited until the last fifty was laid down, dived into his own pocket and counted out his bundle of fifties. He paused before laying down the tenth.

'Who's paying for the beer?' he asked cunningly.

There was a long pause while this was pondered.

'Take it out of the centre,' said the older man at last.

'All right, Ivan. Here's the biggest beer-up of your life, and on me,' said the older man, grabbing Ivan by the shoulder.

'Come on, Bill,' he said to the barman, 'set up ten stubbies. Ivan's gonna sink a hundred.'

Bill didn't react, just reached into the refrigerator and lined ten stubbies up on the counter.

'Off you go, Ivan. Remember, I'm betting on you.'

'He's gotta be standing at the end,' said the younger man, sullenly, now sounding worried.

'He'll be standing. Come on, Ivan. Sink 'em.'

Ivan was looking at the ten stubbies. You could see he was thinking by the contortions of his face. You could almost hear him. The three men were now the centre of a large circle that had formed as the concept of the bizarre bet was grasped by the other drinkers. Money was appearing from dusty pockets as side bets were laid. Ivan was still thinking.

'Come on, Ivan.' 'I want a hundred bucks,' said Ivan.

The older man was shocked. 'What do you mean, you want a hundred bucks?'

'I mean I want a hundred bucks.'

'Whaffor?'

'Drinking the beer.'

'But you're getting the beer free.'

'I want a hundred bucks.'

Conversations tend to be limited on the opal fields.

'You can go to hell.' 'Right.'

Ivan turned back to the bar and ordered another beer. The older man looked at this disbelievingly. Ivan downed his beer. Obviously he intended to stand by his position.

'All right then,' said the older man desperately, 'if you drink all of the hundred stubbies, I'll give you a hundred bucks.'

'A hundred for trying,' returned Ivan, without even turning around.

'God Almighty. What happens if you drink fifty beers and pack it in? Do I still give you a hundred dollars?'

'A hundred for trying,' said Ivan.

The older man stared at the impossibly broad and unyielding back. You could tell that he was thinking, struggling for a solution. 'Tell you what,' he said finally, 'a hundred and fifty if you make it, nothing if you don't. How's that?'

Ivan was thinking. A long pause. 'All right,' he said, and reached for the first stubby.

'Take if off the top,' said the older man to his companion, which presumably meant that the winner would have to pay Ivan's fee.

This seemed reasonable to the younger man, but he was slow to make up his mind. By the time he had nodded assent, Ivan had already drunk six stubbies.

His technique was impressive. He picked up one of the little squat bottles in each hand and flicked the tops off with his thumbs. Most men need a metal implement for this, but not Ivan—he had thumbnails he could use as chisels. Then he raised his right hand, threw back his head and poured the beer into his gaping mouth all at once, the whole bottleful, one continuous little jet of beer until the bottle was empty. Then he did the same with the bottle in his left hand. Both bottles empty, he put them down neatly on the counter and reached for two more.

There are 375 millilitres of beer in each of these bottles. Legally, if you drink three in an hour, you are too drunk to drive a motor car. One hundred bottles would be 37 500 millilitres. The mathematics are beyond me, but it must be a monumental weight of beer. I timed him. It took just on eight seconds to empty a bottle, one second to put the two bottles on the counter, one second to pick up two more, one second to flip off the tops. He was swallowing a stubbie every eleven seconds.

Swallowing's not the word. There was no movement in his throat. He was just pouring it straight down into his stomach. A stubbie every eleven seconds. At that rate, he would be able to drink 100 in 1100 seconds—that's less than an hour. But he couldn't keep that up. For obvious reasons; he'd burst, for one.

I wasn't the only man in the bar making these calculations. In the great circle that now surrounded Ivan, men were looking at their watches and counting. To save time the barman had put twenty cold stubbies on the counter just as Ivan downed the tenth. Ivan didn't pause. He was drinking, or working, as rhythmically as though he were on an assembly line: pour down one bottle, pour down the next, both bottles on the counter, pick up the next two, flip off the tops, pour down one bottle, pour down the next.

The only sound in the bar was the slap of the bottles on the counter and the metallic rattle of the bottle tops hitting the floor. All the drinkers were silent, watching in an almost religious awe, their own glasses held unnoticed.

I realised for the first time that the clock hanging above the bottles at the back of the bar had a chime. It chimed six o'clock just as Ivan finished his fortieth bottle of beer. As if it were a signal, he slammed the two bottles on the bar and paused. The silence became intense as everybody started leaning forward slightly, wondering. I was convinced Ivan would drop dead.

Ivan stood motionless, his hands on the bar, his body inclined slightly forward. The pause lengthened, the silence deepened, if silence can deepen. I could even hear the clock ticking. Suddenly, Ivan's back muscles convulsed and a monumental belch erupted through the bar, breaking the silence like a violent crack of thunder. I swear the front rank of spectators reeled back. There was a burst of cheering and laughing and clapping.

Ivan reached for the next two bottles and was back to his rhythm again. Forty-five bottles, fifty, fifty-five, sixty. The impossible was being translated into reality in front of our eyes. Then came a piece of virtuosity: Ivan flipped the tops off two bottles but instead of raising his right hand, he raised both hands and poured the contents of two bottles down his throat simultaneously. It took just eight seconds. Seven hundred and fifty milligrams of beer in eight seconds to join the flood that was already coursing through his stomach, intestines, bloodstream.

Technically he had to be dead. No human tissue could withstand an assault of alcohol like that. Perhaps Ivan wasn't human; perhaps he had never been alive. He had stopped again. He glanced around the circle of spectators.

'Had it, Ivan?' said one hopefully.

Ivan ignored him.

He looked to his principal, the older drinker. There was something he'd forgotten, a condition in the contract that hadn't been spelled out.

'Time out to leak?' he said, a little plaintively.

'Sure, get going,' said his backer.

Ivan was away from the bar for five minutes, which wasn't surprising. I wondered whether he had regurgitated some of the beer, but this didn't seem to occur to anybody else.

At eighty bottles, Ivan stopped again. We waited expectantly for the mighty belch, but it didn't come. He paused for about fifteen seconds and then reached for two new bottles. But there was a change of pace. The mighty fingernails fumbled slightly before the bottle tops flew off. His movements were deliberate and ponderous. Once he missed his aim and a jet of beer splashed on to his chin. I wondered whether this counted as a whole bottle but nobody raised the point. He was pausing each time he set down the bottles.

I was aware that gently, almost whispering, the whole bar was counting: 'Eighty-five, eighty-six, eighty-seven, eighty-eight.' The count was slowing as Ivan's drinking rate slowed. By now he was taking fifteen seconds a bottle, then eighteen, nineteen. At ninety-five bottles, Ivan stopped again, one half-full bottle in his left hand. He leaned forward. We waited again for the belch, but there was no sound.

Ivan shook his head from side to side. I saw his eyes. They had gone completely white, like a blind man's.

Ivan started to sway.

'Come on, Ivan, into 'em, boy!'

Ivan's massive body swung around in a slow circle, his feet still firmly on the floor. But then he steadied himself and the giant hand was raised. But this time he put the bottle to his lips. It did not go down in one unbroken stream. He swallowed many times with great effort. He put the bottle on the counter and reached for two more. He couldn't get the tops off; the barman whipped them off for him. Slowly, painfully, his eyeballs rolled deep into his head, his body swaying in ever-increasing circles, Ivan drank each bottle.

'Ninety-nine!' It was a roar.

Then Ivan drank the ninety-ninth bottle. By then he was spinning quickly, inclining his body at an impossible angle. Only the weight and size of his legs can have kept him upright.

Somebody had to put the hundredth bottle into his hand. Obviously he couldn't see it, or anything else for that matter, but somehow his hand found his gyrating head and he got the bottle to his lips.

Down went the beer, slowly, terribly slowly. But down it went, all of it.

'One hundred!' It was a mighty animal scream. The empty bottle crashed to the floor. Ivan had drunk one hundred stubbies in just under an hour.

Three or four men tried to stop Ivan spinning and there was a general hubbub as bets were settled and fresh drinks ordered. Then Ivan brought instant silence with a vast bellow.

'Vodka!' he shouted.

The word, as much as the level of Ivan's thunderous voice, brought the silence.

He turned to the bar and thumped it.

'Vodka!'

Dazed, the barman poured him a nip of vodka.

Ivan brushed the glass off the bar with a sweep of his hand that demolished half a dozen other drinkers' glasses as well.

'The bottle!' he roared.

There was silence.

Then timidly, terrified in the presence of mystical greatness, the barman put a bottle of vodka on the counter. It was open, but Ivan broke its neck on the bar in a ritual gesture. Apparently he could see again, although his eyes were still just blank white.

He raised the vodka bottle until the jagged neck was a handspan from his mouth, then poured a gush of the clear spirit down his throat. Half the bottle gone, he slapped it down on the counter; it rolled on its side and the vodka slopped onto the floor. Nobody noticed.

Arms by his side, eyes pure white, body rigid, Ivan made for the door of the bar. A quick passage cleared for him and he went through in a stumbling rush, like a train through a forest. He crashed into the swinging door, the bright flash of late sunlight illuminating his huge frame, and plunged headfirst out into the street, hitting the dust with a thud that seemed to shake the building. Just once his head moved, and then he was a motionless heap of sweat-sodden humanity in the dust.

'We' d better get a truck to take the poor bastard home,' said somebody.

'Yeah.' And two of the drinkers, kindly men, wandered off to organise the truck.

'He's forgotten his money,' said someone else.

'I'll keep it for him,' said the barman. 'He'll be back in the morning. Probably have a head.'

Vic the Snake Man

Vic the Snake Man is probably the only man ever to survive being attacked by a python and a taipan in rapid succession.

I met him on the Butterfly Farm, a family picnic entertainment centre on the banks of the Hawkesbury near Windsor, just out of Sydney. His job was to look after the snakes on display and give lectures on them to the farm patrons. I was doing some publicity work for the farm and found both Vic and his snakes intriguing.

Vic (I never did know his other name) was very tall, very thin and very dirty. He had spare yellow hair and two or three yellow teeth that, possibly by association, looked like fangs. He possessed only one pair of trousers, which were very tattered, and allowed it to be apparent that he wore no underwear. He also had a shirt with no buttons and several holes, and the remnants of a pair of sandshoes which he wore without socks.

He seemed to eat nothing except patent headache powders and the handmade cigarettes he held between two of his fangs until they disintegrated or were swallowed. His voice was very nasal and he spoke very slowly. His opaque yellow eyes were sunk deeply into his head, peering like little animals from the grime-laden crevasses of his thin, craggy face. He was never seen without a snake, usually poisonous, around his neck and another two or three in his pockets, poking their heads timidly out of the holes.

He was so unprepossessing that he was fascinating, and his knowledge of reptiles was formidable. His enthusiasm was so great that he unaffectedly transmitted it to his audience. His strength was that if you saw him you couldn't help staring at him and if you stared at him you were captivated by the slow, drawling stream of information that poured from him. Your attention was usually concentrated by the fact that he was always brandishing some particularly deadly creature. Vic loved snakes—deeply, purely and passionately. I thought snakes loved him until the taipan bit him. And that was just after the python tried to strangle him. Perhaps it was just an off day for Vic.

He had started his morning lecture session on a large wooden-railed platform used for various demonstrations. As usual, scattered around the platform were cloth bags of various sizes that wriggled and bulged excitingly. Vic reached down into one large bag and pulled out a huge North Queensland forest python. The thing was about six metres long and had a heavy blunt black head as big as a large dog's. The five hundred or so people in his audience sighed as metre after metre of snake as thick as a man's thigh emerged from the bag and began winding itself around Vic's legs.

'Many people think . . .' Vic's monologue was proceeding; '. . . that a snake is a slimy thing that is not pleasant to touch. Now this is Very Wrong.' Just about everything people thought about snakes was 'Very Wrong' according to Vic, who used the phrase dozens of times in every lecture. 'In fact, the skin of a snake is smooth, dry, cool and pleasant to the touch and does not feel scaly.'

By now the snake had made its way up to Vic's chest and was wrapped around him so that he looked as though he was wearing a pneumatic grey-green rubber wetsuit of extraordinary thickness. There must have been four coils of snake around him, but half the brute was still on the platform, waving slowly.

'It is also commonly thought that the python strangles its prey. This is Very Wrong. What it does once it has enmeshed some creature is to tighten its coils and so prevent its victim from breathing.'

'Does it bite?' called somebody in the audience.

'The python bites for two reasons,' said Vic, as the snake's coils moved up to his throat and the head, almost as big as his, peered over his shoulder. 'One is to defend itself against attack, and…'

Vic was now enveloped in snake from thighs to head. You could only see little bits of his face between the coils. But he never faltered in his monologue and his hands were waving in the air as usual, not, as one might have expected, clawing at the snake.

'Once the victim has stopped breathing the snake will lick the body to make it easy to swallow . . .'

Vic's voice was growing fainter, but we all assumed it was because it was being muted by the folds of snake around his mouth. You could still distinguish most of the words.

'Aborigines find the meat of this forest python very good to eat . . .' By now his voice was little more than a breathless mutter but everybody, including myself, assumed that it was only part of the act. 'No doubt this is due to its deep forest habitat, and possibly because . . .'

Vic's voice cut out altogether and his hands stopped making illustrative gestures and began dragging at the section of snake around his neck. He staggered backwards towards the rail and the people near him scattered.

This was too much realism, so I leapt onto the stage, followed by a couple of hardy spectators, grabbed the snake's tail and began to unwind it. The snake didn't particularly care for this and began hissing and darting its heavy black head towards us. I knew enough about snakes by now to know that its bite wouldn't be particularly harmful; but this was a purely intellectual attitude and my emotions as the thing flickered its tongue, hissed and waved its head threateningly, were those of substantial terror.

Nevertheless I could not let Vic be strangled in full view of the public, even though he had recently told that public that pythons didn't strangle their victims.

We got enough of the snake away to enable us to see Vic's face, which had gone vermillion. Streaked with sweat cutting through the dirt on his face, he looked like a strawberry recently plucked from a muddy garden. As soon as he could speak he said, 'It is commonly thought that snakes, particularly pythons, are very hardy creatures, but this is Very Wrong.'

Vic, totally unabashed, went on talking as he stuffed the snake back into its bag. The crowd thought it was sheer showmanship and cheered mightily.

Perhaps the unusually loud applause exhilarated Vic. Instead of taking a slight rest by exhibiting an assortment of some of the less lethal reptiles, he opened a small, violently squirming bag and pulled out an overexcited taipan.

The taipan is not only a very deadly snake, it looks like a very deadly snake. Slender as a whip and fast-moving, this brown, metre-long specimen wound itself around Vic's arms, darted furious glances at the crowd from its sharp killer's head and flickered its tongue towards Vic's face.

'Now it is commonly thought that the taipan is a very vicious snake which will attack without provocation,' said Vic. 'This is Very Wrong.' Vic unwound the snake from his arm and held it up before the audience.

'You will note that my method of handling this snake is very slow and calm. This is to make sure it is not alarmed. Now this snake, although used to crowds and noise, is very excited today and moving around rapidly. That means it is at its most dangerous, and unless handled in the calm professional manner I am using, would undoubtedly bite.'

At this point the taipan sank its fangs into Vic's neck.

A taipan is so fast that nothing within striking range could possibly avoid it. Vic's neck had been barely a handspan from the snake's fangs. At one instant the taipan was waving from side to side, then it flashed forwards, bit Vic and withdrew, but so quickly it seemed it hadn't happened, couldn't have happened. The strike, the bite and the withdrawal all happened in less time than a mousetrap takes to snap down.

Vic raised his hand to his bitten neck and looked at the snake reprovingly. 'Now, that was most unusual,' he said calmly. 'That is the first time I have been bitten by a snake that I was handling.'

The crowd was awed and silent, not sure whether it was witnessing a planned act or whether Vic had genuinely been bitten by a deadly snake. I knew he had and I was horrified. Horrified and very reluctant to go and relieve Vic of the taipan, which seemed much happier and relaxed now.

But Vic seemed unperturbed.

'That bite would have been very dangerous, probably fatal, if it had happened to one of you . . .'

Abruptly a blob of foam exploded from his mouth, his eyes rolled up in his head so they were only white bulbs and his body went rigid. A strange inhuman squawk burst from his chest and fought its way out of his mouth in a splatter of froth. His hands went straight above his head in a convulsive gesture. The taipan went flying through the air above the panicking crowd. Vic fell flat on his back, quite stiff, the only sign of life the bubbling foam at his mouth.

The snake took a long time to fall and when it did, it landed in the lap of a quadraplegic youth in a wheelchair. This was probably just as well because if it had to land on somebody, it was best for it to land on somebody who couldn't move. It slipped off the youth's lap and wriggled swiftly away into a patch of scrub.

I was on the platform by now, screaming for somebody to call an ambulance and for somebody else to kill the wretched taipan, totally disregarding Vic's position on preserving native reptiles.

By the time we got Vic to hospital he had gone quite black. Every vein in his body seemed to have collapsed and he looked as though he hail been brutally beaten and bruised all over. He was just breathing and still frothing at the mouth and emitting these hideous animal sounds. He was in an iron lung for a week and spent three months in hospital. He never touched a snake again.

We organised a search for the taipan, but never did find it. For all I know, it's still roaming around the banks of the Hawkesbury River.

Liquid Assets

I think I can safely claim to be the only writer in Australia ever to have given an enema to an elephant—quite possibly the only writer in the world.

The elephant was named Annie, and she was on a farm owned by a friend of mine, Alan Trevor, in northern New South Wales. Alan was minding her for a travelling circus which was in recess.

She was a medium-sized, very gentle, tractable elephant who spent her time doing nothing except eating vast quantities of hay and slightly rotten fruit. She had a grey and wrinkled face and soft brown eyes with long lashes.

Alan had made a small business of selling her droppings as particularly effective fertiliser. He showed me with some pride several bags of elephant dung ready for sale. 'She supplies tons of the stuff,' he told me. 'So much I'm going to have to put it in the book as assets.' Thereafter, he kept referring to elephant dung as 'assets'.

Then one day the dung stopped dropping.

'Nothing's happened for two days,' said Alan. 'There's about a tonne of assets blocked in the pipeline.'

We put in an urgent call for a veterinary surgeon to come and inspect Annie.

By the time the vet arrived, she had given up trying to eat and was standing looking uncomfortably at the world and visibly swelling. Her shape gave her a comical appearance; she looked for all the world like a giant elephant balloon about to go floating off into the air. Alan, who has a fondness for black humour, speculated on the possibility of her actually doing this and wondering whether we could somehow utilise the condition as a means of disposing of her corpse.

'I suppose the authorities might object,' he added. 'I mean, a couple of tonnes of dead elephant floating around the sky might be considered a health hazard.'

Annie's mournful eyes turned on Alan and even he had the grace to abandon that line of conversation.

The vet, whom Alan knew quite well, was a squat, vigorous, thick-bodied and bearded man in his fifties.

He looked at Annie cautiously. 'No droppings for two days?' he said.

Possibly longer, we said; we'd only checked two days before.

The vet thought for a few moments. 'I've never treated an elephant,' he said,' but I suppose they're not very different from any of the bovines.'

He moved over to Annie and began pressing his hands hard against her distended stomach. Annie gently touched him on the shoulder with her trunk.

'It's like trying to palpate a dirigible,' said the vet. 'Anybody know how many stomachs an elephant's got?' Nobody did.

'Well, it's fairly obvious there's a bowel blockage,' said the vet. 'But God knows what it is. It could be a kink in the intestines, or a tumour, or a straight-out case of oldfashioned constipation. There's no way of telling for sure.'

'Do you think she's dangerously ill?' said Alan.

'She looks to me as though she's going to blow apart at any minute,' said the vet. 'If she was a cow I'd assume it was the bloat and try to let the air out by puncturing her stomach, but...' he gestured at the huge inflated bulk towering over us, and shrugged.

'So you think she's in danger?' asked Alan again.

'My guess is she could well be dead in half an hour,' said the vet. 'You see, what's happening—she's got a lot of vegetable matter inside her and nothing getting out. It's fermenting and producing gas. Her intestinal track is one great balloon pressing against her vital organs. Eventually something will break, or she won't be able to breathe. If we could get her to belch it might help—obviously nothing's coming out the other way, but how the hell do you get an elephant to belch?'

We considered the question, but unprofitably.

'I'll go and ring someone I know at the zoo,' said the vet. 'Might be able to get some help.'

He hurried off to a phone and Alan and I stood silently, sadly considering Annie, who was so blown up now that she didn't seem able to move, and who looked more than ever like a huge balloon or a stuffed toy of gigantic proportions. She distinctly conveyed the impression of being about to burst, and we instinctively moved back from what would be a cataclysmic explosion.

The vet came hurrying back, looking positively gleeful. 'Right,' he said, 'we're going to give her an enema!'

This statement was not met with absolute joy by either of us. There was a short silence broken by Alan, who said, 'How?'

The vet rubbed his hands together and looked at Annie speculatively. 'Get me the biggest water container you've got—a forty-four-gallon drum would be ideal—make sure it's clean, fill it with water, and get me four gallons of detergent, biodegradable.

'And,' he continued, 'I want a hand or foot pump and twenty or thirty metres of hose that can be attached to it. Can you do that?'

We stood rapt in the implications of what he was saying and then Alan broke the spell again. 'Yes, I can organise that.' He went off and organised it.

Four neighbouring farmers who had heard about the problem turned up to laugh. Soon they were standing ten metres away looking on interestedly and safely, while Alan, the vet and I stood behind Annie with a forty-four-gallon drum full of water and detergent, a foot pump and a length of plastic hose rigged so that the pump's contents could be pumped out efficiently.

I was delegated to do the pumping, which unfortunately necessitated my standing more or less directly behind Annie and not far away. I pumped on order in a test run and the hose produced a satisfactory jet of water.

'All right,' said the vet. 'So I'll feed it in. This animal is quite docile, isn't she?'

'I'll stand and hold her head,' said Alan promptly, 'just to make sure.'

'Well,' said the vet, 'here goes. You're quite sure she'll put up with this?'

'It's never been done before,' said Alan, putting his hand on Annie's trunk. 'But don't worry, I've got her.' If she decided to object, Alan would be as much use as a minnow trying to stay the progress of a whale.

'Here goes then,' said the vet.

Annie turned her head around once with a gaze of infinite reproach as the operation started, but then she turned it back again and let it droop until her trunk was lying on the ground. A most dejected elephant.

'Trouble is,' said the vet, 'I've really no idea of the length of an elephant's large intestine. All I can do is keep feeding this in until it stops and hope I don't do any damage. Still, the guts should be pretty tough.'

He fed the hose in vigorously. Vast lengths disappeared. I pumped. Annie swelled. The level of water in the drum fell rapidly. My leg began to ache.

When about ten metres of hose had disappeared, the vet paused. 'Nothing so far,' he said. 'Just keep pumping and we'll see if we can swill it out with water.'

I pumped. Annie continued to swell. Alarmingly. The drum was half empty. There was a lot of water in Annie.

'What exactly do you expect to happen?' I said belatedly.

'The obvious,' said the vet. 'Get ready to duck.'

I had been ready to duck for some time. I glanced enviously at the neighbouring four farmers, who were laughing their heads off a good five metres back.

'OK,' said the vet. 'We'll try a bit further.'

More of the pipe disappeared. I pumped. Annie swelled. The drum was almost three-quarters empty. My right leg was aching severely.

'Trouble is,' said the vet, 'I could be wrong. If it's not a soluble blockage, I'm only making things worse. But there's nothing else to do; keep pumping.'

I kept pumping. Annie continued to swell. The tension was increasing dangerously. Surely something had to happen.

It happened.

There was a sound like tearing canvas, unbearably amplified, impossibly close, continuous, like the furious rumble of heavy artillery. I flung myself to one side and landed on my back. The very sky above me darkened and a black cloud blotted out the sun. I rolled over and scrambled away and then turned on my hands and knees and looked.

A black thunderstorm ten metres long and five wide obscured most of my vision and the thunder of its passing deafened my ears. It was astonishing, and even more astonishing when four blackened and dripping figures emerged from it and staggered towards me, all with their hands to their faces and rubbing their eyes. The four laughing farmers had not been far enough away.

The vet was jubilant. 'We've done it! We've done it!' he shouted through the thunder. I couldn't see anything but his legs. He was on the other side of the black cloud.

The whole thing lasted the better part of two minutes. By the end of it, Annie—considerably reduced in bulk and looking very relieved—had already started eating. The hose had been automatically detached.

The farmers were rolling on the grass trying to clean themselves. Alan was laughing himself silly. The vet was explaining proudly that he had fixed it. It had only been a simple blockage. Nothing to worry about at all, now.

Alan was becoming hysterical and he kept on repeating two words endlessly. I picked myself up and concentrated on what he was saying.

'Liquid assets!' he was saying. 'Liquid assets!'

A Couple of Interesting Specimens

I was hunting butterflies in Cape York Peninsula when I came as near as I ever want to come to the violent death of a human being.

The butterflies and any other insects I could find were for a friend of mine who collected them commercially. I was paid a small sum for the specimens I sent south, so small that I calculated that if I charged my running expenses against the project, each specimen would be costing me about $20.

But it gave me an excuse for wandering around the bush. As the first question everyone asks you up north is, 'What do you do?', it was more acceptable to say, 'Collect insects', than, 'Write books'. Not much more respectable, just slightly more.

I was camped in a clump of pandanus about fifty kilometres out of Weipa one morning when I heard the sound of a motor.

About a quarter of an hour later, a four-wheel-drive police vehicle came down the track. The driver swung over towards me as soon as he saw my camp. There was nothing remarkable in that—everybody stops to talk to everybody on the Peninsula.

Three men climbed out of the police vehicle. The first was a tall, good-looking policeman aged about thirty, neatly dressed in his bush uniform of shorts and shirt and wide-brimmed hat; the other two were about the same age but dressed in rough bush clothes and looking shifty. One of these was very well built and tough-looking with black bushy hair, a black beard and brutal brown eyes. The other was thin, almost bald, more or less clean-shaven, with brutal watery blue eyes.

'G'day,' said the policeman.

'G'day,' I said.

'G'day, g'day,' said the two civilians.

'G'day,' I said.

There followed the inevitable long, contemplative pause.

'Warm,' said the policeman.

'Yes,' I said. Then added hastily, 'Yeah.'

'For this time of the year,' added the policeman in explanation.

'Yeah,' I said.

Another quite long pause.

Then the policeman got down to business, obviously embarrassed by his own unseemly haste.

'Seen a fellow around on foot the last couple of days?'

'Saw a Murri^* over the beach the day before yesterday.' I regretted this as soon as I said it because it then occurred to me that the policeman was on a manhunt and I didn't want to be an informer, at least until I knew what the man was being hunted for.

'No,' said the policeman, 'a white bloke.'

'On foot?' I said. You never saw a white man on foot there.

'Yeah,' said the policeman, 'probably.'

'No. I haven't seen any whites, on foot or otherwise. What's he done?'

'Nothing. Just lost. What you doing up here?'

'Catching insects.'

'Oh.' (Long pause.) 'Getting plenty?'

'Yeah.'

'Good.'

Another pause. 'Seen any crocodiles?'

'Yeah. Quite a few.'

'In the creeks, you mean? Little fellas?'

'Well, one was about six feet long,' I said defensively.

'Yeah, but freshwater. Haven't seen a big estuarine croc?'

'No. But I haven't been near the sea much.'

'Oh, they go overland. You want to watch it while you're camping.'

'They ever grab anybody?'

The policeman plucked a straw of grass and began chewing it. 'We think this bloke we're looking for might have been taken by one,' he said. ' He was camped with his mates here,' he nodded towards the two civilians, 'and went off for a stroll by himself. Didn't come back. No sign of him since.'

'Where was all this?'

'About half an hour up the track from here. Anyway, if you see him, let him know we were looking for him, will you?'

'Sure.'

They drove off and I continued hunting insects, keeping a wary eye out for crocodiles. I had always thought they stuck to the water or very close to it, and only attacked swimmers or drinking cattle. The idea of a crocodile roaming around in the scrub seemed as unlikely as it was disturbing. I thought the policeman might have been pulling my leg. Queenslanders are like that.

Late that afternoon the policeman, whose name was Jack, called at my camp again. The civilians weren't with him.

'Did you find him?' I asked.

'No. You seen anyone?'

'No.'

Jack squatted on one haunch in the manner of those who live north of the Tropic of Capricorn. I tried to imitate him but found it very uncomfortable and settled for sitting on the ground.

'Found his clothes,' said Jack.

'His clothes?'

'Yeah. Shoes, socks, shirt, pants and hat, all neatly stacked against a tree. Must have taken them off and put them there himself.'

'Why?'

'Probably wanted to cool off in a creek. There's a bit of a creek there. Enough water to sit in.'

'What do you think then?'

'Croc might have got him.'

The thought lay heavily between us for a few moments.

' 'Course, it might not have,' added Jack.

'What else, then?'

Jack thought. 'He might have wanted to blow through. Disappear. Make people think a croc had got him, or he had got lost or something.'

'Why would he want to do that?'

Jack shrugged. 'People often do. Might have been on the run, or just wanted to get away from a wife or something. Happens a lot. Bloke always seems to turn up, though. Get charged if they do.'

'What with?'

'Public nuisance. Can't have blokes like meself tearing around looking for people if they're not lost or dead.'

'No. I suppose not.'

' 'Course,' said Jack reflectively, 'he might've been knocked off. Thought that yesterday. Not so sure now.'

'Who might have knocked him off?'

'His mates,' said Jack, looking surprised that I would ask so obvious a question. I thought about the 'mates" brutal eyes.

'Why?'

He shrugged again. 'People do. Might have had a row over money, or a woman or something. It happens.'

'What are they doing up here?'

Jack shrugged again. 'They reckon they're fishing. I think they're probably poaching.'

'Poaching what?'

'Crocs. Protected, you know. Skins worth a hell of a lot of money.'

'But you don't think they . . . knocked off . . . their mate now, eh?'

'No. Clothes were too neatly stacked. Those two wouldn't have got them off him as neatly as that if he was dead. Anyway, they're not bright enough to lay a false trail like that. No, I reckon a croc got him.'

'Well there's not much you can do about that, is there?'

'Probably have to get the croc.'

'How?'

'Oh, trail around until I find it. It'd be a pretty big one.'

'But what's the point?'

'Get the body back. If it's not digested. Besides, have to kill the croc.'

'Why? Particularly if they're protected? I mean, any big crocodile is dangerous, isn't it? This one's not more dangerous because it's killed a man.'

'No. But we always kill 'em if they take somebody. If we can.'

That seemed to me like killing a tree because it dropped a branch on somebody, but I didn't pursue the argument.

'Anyway,' said Jack, 'he might have just got himself lost and be still wandering around, or he might have shot through.'

'So what are your plans?'

'Going back to get instructions from the boss,' he said, standing up. 'Be seeing you. If you happen to see him, don't forget to tell him I'm looking for him. You'll know him because he'll have no clothes on, probably. Be seeing you.'

'See you.'

He dropped in again next morning, ostensibly to ask again whether I had seen the missing man, but really because he just liked dropping in.

I had more or less worked the area dry for specimens, but I was interested in hanging around to find out what had happened.

'My boss reckons the setup's a bit crook,' he said. 'I've got to keep nosing about until I find out what did happen to the bastard.'

'Does your . . . boss . . . think it was a crocodile?'

'Should be more signs if it was, he says. Fair enough. You see, the creek near where his clothes were was pretty small—you could step over it. If he was sitting in there and the croc got him, you'd expect to find some blood and stuff on the banks—but it might have all been washed away. Then if the croc got him on dry land, there should be some traces around— until the ants clean it up, of course. It's a pity he wasn't wearing his clothes. Always something left when a stiff's been wearing clothes.'

'Do many people get taken by crocodiles, then?'

'Nah. Few of the Murri kids, old people. No, people die lots of ways out here and then the dogs and the birds and the ants and the pigs clean 'em up pretty quickly—often don't even find bones, but you usually get a bit of clothing. Now we got all this bloke's clothing, but it looks as though he took everything off himself. Even his wristwatch was in the pocket of his pants.'

'How exactly would a crocodile get him on dry land, or even in a little creek? Surely he'd hear it coming.'

'Nah. They can move like a galloping horse for a short distance. Seen one jump out of the water over on the coast once and run after a bloody great cow. She didn't have a chance. She caught wind of him all right and started to gallop away, but he ran her down, grabbed her by the back leg and dragged her into the water. Ever seen the big lizards run? Croc's as fast as that. Only for a short distance, though.'

He rolled himself a cigarette. 'Bloody awful animals, crocs. The big ones. I don't know why they're protected. I nearly walked into one last year. That's another way they get you—they just lie doggo and you walk into them and bang! you're gone. This one I struck wasn't hungry. He just stood up on his hind legs and bellowed at me, like a bull. Frightened buggery out of me.'

'What'd you do?'

'Blew his guts out. Makes 'em easy to kill when they rear up like that. Belly's the softest part. You can bounce a .303 off their backs if you hit 'em at any sort of angle.'

You never know how much to believe of what anybody tells you about animals up north. I've heard dozens of stories about snakes chasing and catching a man on a motorcycle, buffaloes that charged and wrecked cars, pigs of unbelievable size and ferocity disembowelling horses. However, my policeman seemed to know all about crocodiles.

'Should hear a bull croc when they 're mating. Horrible sound. He bellows all the time. It's not like an ordinary mating. The bull bails up a few females in a creek and just rapes 'em. Rough as buggery, they are. 'Course, the female's just as bad. They lay their eggs and then hang around for a long while and God help anything that goes near that nest. Then they just bugger off and leave 'em. The baby croc comes out of the shell snapping and growling and hissing like a young dragon. Nasty brutes. Anyhow . . .'

He stood up and tossed his cigarette butt into the ashes of the campfire.

'I suppose I'd better get along and see if I can find this one. "The body or the bloke," my boss said.'

He came back again about mid-afternoon and because I felt that I had got to know him well by then, I offered him a beer. He accepted and rolled a cigarette, lit it, drank some of his beer and squatted on his haunch.

'No luck?' I said.

'Yes, well, sort of.'

'Did you find him?'

'Found his legs.'

There seemed to be a sudden stillness in the pandanus clump as the three laconic words emerged with shocking force. It took me several moments to accept that this was reality and then all I managed to do was repeat his words.

'Found his legs?'

'Yeah. About five minutes' walk away from his clothes. In the scrub.'

'I see.' It was a subject simultaneously repulsive and intriguing. I felt a little ill, but I wanted to know more.

'What . . . I mean . . . how did you find the—ah—legs?'

'Heard the blowflies.' I wished I hadn't asked.

Jack puffed away at his cigarette.

'Wouldn't have thought we'd find anything,' he said thoughtfully. 'Usually a croc will take its kill off to its lair if it doesn't swallow it on the spot.'

'It was a crocodile, then,' I said foolishly.

'Oh yeah, thought of that. These legs weren't cut off. You can see the bite marks very clearly. Big bugger he must be.'

'Well, what do you think happened?'

'Oh, it's pretty obvious. The poor bastard was probably sitting in the creek cooling off and the croc grabbed him. There wasn't enough water to drown him—that's what crocs usually do, hold their catch under water until it drowns—so it went off with him, probably heading for a deep pool. Then it stopped on the way and ate him.'

The words were almost impossible to accept. It was difficult to realise that while I had been scouring the scrub for specimens this frightful drama had been enacted almost within shouting distance.

'But why leave the legs?'

'Dunno. That puzzles me a bit. Maybe it didn't eat him there. Maybe he was still kicking and it just took time off to kill him. Wouldn't think so—grass was all flattened and matted, but the ants and the birds had been there so you couldn't tell much.'

'So what do you do now?'

'Take the legs back to town.' He nodded at his vehicle and I realised for the first time that the gruesome relics would be in it. 'Pick up some geli and go and get the croc.'

I was taking rather long pauses between sentences, but that was all right because slow conversations are normal in the north.

'Will it be easy to find?'

'Should be. He wouldn't get far after a decent feed. He'll find a pool and lay up for a while until he digests it. Got to get him before that happens.'

I couldn't see this. It struck me as much more seemly to allow the crocodile to digest his kill rather than recover the awful remains for burial, but it wasn't my business.

'How will you go about looking for him?'

'Just follow the stream down and blow every deep pool we come to. Shouldn't take long. No point in trying for more than a week—there'd be nothing left to find inside the croc after that.'

'Are you going alone?'

'His mates are coming with me. Want to come along? Should be interesting.'

Whenever I do something I'm slightly ashamed of, I use the excuse of the writer's instinct, but it was probably only morbid interest that led me to accept.

Jack picked me up early next morning and we drove down the track in his vehicle.

The two civilians were waiting for us at their camp and I was surprised to find how cheerful they were. I hadn't even known the missing man, but I found his dismemberment a sobering event. Perhaps they were relieved that there was no longer any reasonable suggestion that they had disposed of him themselves. Jack made no attempt to introduce them. He obviously didn't think much of them. They seemed to accept this as natural and kept to themselves.

Jack took a pack, which he explained contained gelignite, and a heavy rifle from his vehicle. The civilians carried old army rifles and small packs. We all began walking into the scrub.

Jack and I went first and the two civilians followed some little way behind. This arrangement just happened, but I had the impression Jack wanted it that way. He was a man of considerable presence and he managed to convey the atmosphere that he was the professional, I was the welcome observer, and the other two were barely tolerated as interested parties.

'That's the tree where we found his clothes,' said Jack after we had walked for a few minutes. It was a large pandanus palm, but unremarkable. 'There's the creek.' He pointed to a trickle of water that emerged from the scrub and formed a very narrow small channel through a clearing. 'My guess is he just sat down in that to get wet. The croc probably shot out of the scrub and grabbed him. Or the croc might have been there first and the poor bastard just walked straight into it. Come on, I'll show you where we found the legs.'

We pushed our way into the scrub.

'You're not worried that the crocodile might be still close by? Or another one?' I asked.

'Wouldn't be another one. This fellow'll be a big bull. He'll have cleared out anything else. Wouldn't even let the females around this time of the year.'

We marched along for a few minutes. The flies were very bad and it was hot.

'That's where we found the legs,' said Jack eventually.

I saw a patch of grass that could have been disturbed recently, but it meant nothing.

'Now I reckon,' said Jack, 'that the croc got him back there either at the creek or somewhere between the creek and his clothes. Now, we found the legs here, so obviously the croc came this way. He'd be heading for a pool and a pool would be on the creek, so my guess is that the creek winds around and if we follow a line running from the clothes to here, we should hit the creek, and we follow that until we find some pools.'

He was not inviting comment, just telling me what he was doing.

We went on into the scrub. Jack pushed briskly and apparently unconcernedly forward, but he did unsling the rifle from his shoulder and carry it with his finger on the safety catch.

He was right, as such men usually are, and we soon struck the stream. We went on in single file, walking in the water with Jack in front—the rifle unashamedly held ready—then me, feeling nervous, then the two civilians following very closely behind. Once Jack turned sharply and said to them, 'Are those guns cocked?'

One admitted that his was.

'Well, uncock it and put the guns over your shoulders.' It hadn't occurred to me to worry about two men walking behind me with loaded rifles, but I realised I should have been worried and was glad of Jack's forethought.

In about twenty minutes the stream widened out into a large stagnant pool lined by pandanus palms and several large gums. The surface was covered with green weed which had been disturbed.

'Could well be in there,' said Jack, and made us all walk around the pool looking for crocodile tracks. There was a lot of grass which had been trodden down by something, but there was also buffalo and pig dung.

'If he's in there, he might have a cache under the bank,' said Jack. That's what they often do with cattle, take 'em into their hole and let 'em rot a bit. But this pool doesn't look big enough for a permanent nest to me. If he's in there, he's just slipped in when he heard us coming.'

I looked at the motionless surface of the pool and wondered whether just below the opaque surface lay a huge reptile with a man in its stomach.

'We'll blow it up anyway,' said Jack, and busied himself with his pack.

His technique was simple enough. He placed a few sticks of gelignite with a detonator in a container. Then he attached a length of wire through which he could send a charge from a small battery-powered plunger. He tossed the container into the centre of the pool and fed the wire out as it sank.

'You could almost stand up in there,' he said when the wire stopped running out. 'It's going to be a hell of a bang in water as shallow as that. We'd better keep back a bit.'

'Will the charge kill him?' I asked.

'Probably. It'll push him flat and wreck his guts. He'd be near enough to dead.'

'He's not likely to come rushing out?'

'No way. He might stick his head up after a while to have a look and see whether there's anything worth eating. But he probably won't be interested in more food at the moment. He'll just want to be left alone.'

At times I thought there was something terribly coldblooded about Jack's attitude, but I suppose it was the only way to go about the job.

We all went back a few paces from the bank and I set off the charge.

It was a hell of a bang.

A vast gout of muddy water and weed shot high into the air, one bank collapsed and a large gum toppled slowly over and fell into the pool. Two large catfish and a barramundi and an eel suddenly were flopping and wriggling on the grass at our feet and we were drenched by water with a vaguely rotten smell.

There was no sign of a crocodile.

'Thought that pool would be a bit shallow for him,' said Jack ' We'll try further down. Bit too much geli there too—you can't judge it unless you know how deep the pool is all over and it's no good probing because there's often holes or tunnels in the sides.'

'He couldn't be in there and dead?'

'Nah. If he was in the pool itself, he'd float up. If he was in a cave in the bank, the top would have blown off. The top of the cave's always above the surface of the water.'

It did strike me that tramping around the banks of a pool that might have contained earth caves sheltering crocodiles a hair's breadth from our feet was not exactly prudent, but Jack wasn't worried and he gave every indication of being careful and competent.

The next pool was only ten minutes' walk away. It was much larger, with only a couple of trees on the banks and a large clearing all around it. Again, there were all sorts of tracks and droppings and the pool had been disturbed by something.

'That looks more like it,' said Jack. 'It has to be pretty deep, too. We'll give it a hell of a blast.'

He began packing gelignite sticks into the metal container.

'Will that kill him if he's in a cave?' I asked.

'Oh, yeah. The pressure this sort of thing creates under water is unbelievable. Trouble is, you kill everything else in the pool too. Still, that can't be helped.'

He tossed the container into the centre of the pool and fed out a lot of wire while it sank.

Prev Next