If You Live in Crocodile Country

Visitors pass through; residents live with the crocodile every day, and that brings its own challenge. For people who live in the Top End, the real danger isn’t ignorance. It’s familiarity. When you see the same river every day and nothing happens for years, the rules can start to feel like someone else’s problem. The hard truth, written into case after case, is that many of the people killed were locals who knew the water well. Knowing a river a long time is not the same as being safe on it. That is how good habits quietly go slack.

Build the habits into daily life

• Treat your local waterways with the same discipline you’d want a visitor to use. The creek behind the house, the local boat ramp, the favourite fishing bank: all of it deserves the full set of rules, every time, no matter how many uneventful years have passed.
• Watch the seasons on your own patch. Know when your nearest waters flood and connect, and treat the Wet as a time when crocodiles can appear in places that were dry or clear for months.
• Keep your property’s water margins in mind. Farm dams, drains and low ground can hold crocodiles after big rains. Check before letting children or pets near any water on rural blocks following floods.
• Manage food and waste. Don’t dispose of fish frames, food scraps or animal carcasses in or beside local water. A community that feeds crocodiles, even accidentally, trains them to associate people with food.