THE ADVERTISER (Adelaide, Australia) 20 August 05 Croc victim's fatal mistakes (Brendan O'Malley)
Brisbane: As Barry Jefferies sat in his Canadian canoe on Midway Waterhole in the remote Normanby River on Cape York, he must have felt at peace with nature.
From the perspective of the 4m crocodile watching him, however, Mr Jefferies and his red plastic canoe were giving off a message:
"I am an angry male and I want to invade your territory."
A drought-proof home like Midway Waterway, deep enough to attract plenty of prey and with warm river banks for sunning, is a prize worth defending if you are a croc.
It is worth trying to take from another male.
The way an upstart young croc lets a rival know he is serious is to float to the surface, puffing up his body and raising his head above water.
"Towards mating season big males try to exclude all other big males – this is simple biology," Central Queensland University reptile specialist John Parmenter said.
"A big male will float on the surface and raise his head high.
"It's a threat display. What he's saying is, `Look at me, look how big I am. If you come any closer I'll beat the living daylights out of you'. But if another male decided to float to the surface as well, he will have a go. If you're sitting in a canoe or a tinnie you could look like an aggressive male."
About 5.30pm on Tuesday, Mr Jefferies had no idea what message he was sending as he sat in his canoe. The Townsville railway worker, who loved fishing, probably made two other fatal mistakes that afternoon.
First, he was sitting down. "A croc has a little, horizontal visual box in front of it. If the prey fits in the box it will go for it," Dr Parmenter said.
"If you're standing you don't fit in the box – you look big and the croc might go away. If you're wading in water, swimming or sitting down, you look smaller."
Mr Jefferies' other mistake was to swim for the bank when he knew he was under attack.
That is a bad move said John Lever, owner of Rockhampton's Koorana Crocodile Farm.
"I remember when Val Plumber was attacked while canoeing in Kakadu in the mid-1980s. She paddled to the water's edge, which is the centre of a croc's territory," he said. "Attacks are more likely to be on the water's edge rather than in the centre of a wide stretch of river."
Mr Lever said no time of year should be considered safe in regard to one of the planet's oldest surviving reptiles.
They ate more once their body temperature rose above 24C because they could metabolise more food and were hungriest when their core temperature reached 30C.
Despite that, most attacks on people were territorial – not driven by hunger.
"I would not be surprised if this man was found entire," he said. "That German girl (Isabel von Jordon, killed during a night swim in Kakadu three years ago) was found with barely any bite marks on her."
Mr Jefferies' death was without doubt a tragedy but could it have been avoided?
Opinions are split on whether it is such a good idea to go for a paddle in such places as the Normanby, a prime croc river in the middle of Litchfield National Park.
Tour operators take an estimated 8000 people a year to the area because sighting at least one big male croc is a sure bet at almost any time of the year.
"There's no denying it was a tragedy. He was obviously a naturalist who loved the trees and birds and fish – but going out in a canoe is absolute lunacy," said Billy Tea Bush Safaris operations manager Tom Rosser.
"People up there won't use anything smaller than a 14-foot (4m) dinghy. They're fairly wide as well and crocs will be daunted by their size."
Northern Territory wildlife tour operator David Gifford doubted the wisdom of paddling a canoe in waterways where crocodiles can be 6m in length and weigh up to a tonne.
He was considering replicating the canoe tours he ran without incident on the Zambezi River in Zimbabwe until he saw a 5.5m croc swim past with a cow in its mouth in the NT.
Mr Lever was less certain, pointing to the low number of attacks on people in dugout canoes in PNG and Africa.
There have now been 19 recorded attacks in Queensland since 1985 – five fatal.
Fewer attacks have occurred in the NT despite its huge croc population, far bigger than the 30,000 in Queensland.
Mr Gifford said the lack of attacks in Africa was because crocodiles were widely hunted and so feared humans.
Queensland Environment Minister Desley Boyle has rejected calls from Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg to bring back culling.
The Humane Society International also dismissed the idea, saying the only way a cull would be effective was to slash numbers to such a degree the reptiles once more would be on the endangered list.
The chairman of the World Conservation Union's crocodile specialist group, Charles Darwin University adjunct Professor Grahame Webb, however, claimed Queensland had got it wrong on croc management.
"We don't sugar-coat our croc education up here in the (Northern) Territory," he said.
"People aren't told crocs are mysterious or marvellous or whatever, they're told they are killers. In such cases you have to kill the croc responsible."
Croc victim's fatal mistakes