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ARNHEMLAND BARRAMUNDI NATURE LODGE

At least we thought it was Magela Creek. We both knew where it should be, but neither of us recalled seeing it as it was then: a narrow gutter hardly a metre wide, meandering across over a thousand tonnes of thick, oozing mud, and dribbling a pathetic grey streak into a brown river.

Yep, Cords was right – Magela Creek was definitely flowing.

It was clearly low tide at the time, so we hung around patiently, Cords flicking a Nilsie and me a prototype of a new lure I was sent to test called Barra King.

An hour went by and there was still no sign of the tide…we decided to get our knees dirty.

Over the side we went, half pushing the dinghy, half hanging on to it, squelching our way up the gutter until, on the other side of the mudbank, the creek began to open and deepen.

This looked better – not yet deep enough to kick the outboard over but at least the boat was floating and the bottom was hard and easy to walk on.

Suddenly, 50 metres ahead of us, a medium-sized croc raced down the bank and plunged into the pool – the same pool that we were standing in.

The trouble was that it found itself in a similar predicament to our own: not enough water.

So there we all were, Cords and I standing on either side of the boat in less than 30 cm of water, and three and a half metres of Crocodylus porosus floundering about in the shallows hardly more than a good cast away.

You’ve got to admit, that’s different.

While we were still gawking, and hadn’t sensibly jumped into the boat, a most unusual thing happened: the croc turned, raced straight back up the bank of the creek and disappeared into the scrub.

For awhile we heard it rattling through the timber, the noise slowly fading away.

It was a spooky encounter, but it wasn’t the time I was nearly eaten by a croc; that happened the next day.

As you might imagine, we backed out of Magela Creek without thinking too much about it; except that our croc had gone walkabout and there might be even bigger crocs lining the banks above the puddles further up the creek.

Anyway, we spent the rest of the day upriver in clear water, and actually bagged a few barra, including on the prototype Barra King which was going well.

Sunday morning found us back at the top of the tidal section of the East Alligator, trolling around some rocks and over some timber, when my Barra King got snagged.

Cords didn’t have a lure prodder onboard; back then we were still diving for lures if we couldn’t pull them off and we were desperate.

It was only 10 years before that crocodiles became fully-protected and hunting them was banned.

Before that was what I call the crocodile holocaust – the 30-odd years when it was open slather on these ancient animals; when every feral and his dog were out there blasting them, harpooning them or baiting them on a meat hook and chain; when it was trendy for women in Europe and the USA to swing a crocodile-skin handbag over the shoulder of a baby fur seal coat.

Most of the big crocs never made it through that era, and those that did were pretty gun shy, so diving for lures in the ‘70s was not considered dangerous.

Well I was desperate. I didn’t want to lose that Barra King; it was a fish catcher and it would be a while before it came on the market.

We’d anchored the boat so that we sat right above the lure, and I was jerking the rod up and down and side to side, but it wasn’t budging.

‘What do you reckon Cords, do you think I should dive?” I asked, hoping to get a reassuring go for it.

“Up to you AJ; it’s your lure,” Cords replied, carefully staying out of the decision-making process.

At the time I had this notion that a crocodile could only stay underwater for 20 minutes before it needed to surface for air.

I can remember scanning all the water up and down and across the river with my keen young eyes, glancing at my watch a couple of times every minute, jerking the rod in between, until finally 25 minutes had elapsed…it was now or never.

I gave Cords the rod and began unbuttoning my shirt, not too quickly but with the purpose and determination required of a courageous act to follow.

I think I was on the last button when a 5 metre saltwater crocodile surfaced just behind the boat, its shiny black back rising out of the water like a small sub.

I gazed in astonishment as it swished its ponderous tail, glided slowly in a semi-circle around the boat, turned and swam over to the far bank where it took up station; its huge horse head, wider than your forearm, pointed menacingly straight at the boat.

Probably in shock, I grabbed that rod off Cords and I belted the crap out of it, trying for all my might to break the line.

Ironically, the lure came free and I got it back.

I realised later that what I hadn’t taken account of was that the crocodile could well have swum underwater from around the bend just down the river, perhaps to investigate the noise of the lure rattling on the snag.

It could have done that in well under 20 minutes.

As you would appreciate, since that day, the thought of diving for a lure has never ever crossed my mind.