The Croc Farm.

Saturday was our last morning in Cairns so we decided to take a trip to the crocodile farm. There were a few different events taking place that morning so we decided to tag along and see what happened.

Firstly they take you through to the tanks which contain some of the younger crocodiles they were breeding. The majority of these were still only around 2 years old.




We couldn't actually see the rest that were younger than that as they are kept in warm dark encolsures until a certain age, which aparently they prefer. Can't say as I'm convinced but I guess I'm not the expert on the subject... Apparently they keep the crocs until they reach around 3 years old, at which point they are sold on for their leather and their meat. They fetch around $1000 each at that age. The guy reckoned that there was no wastage from any of the crocodiles either. Apparently they even send the feet off to taxidermists to be turned into back scratchers!

After that we jumped on a boat which takes you round the lakes where the 'display crocs' are. As the boat heads out the crocs clearly know whats happening as they all start to some into the water and swim towards the boat. The guy then sticks a chicken head on the end of a piece of string which is attached to a pole and dangles it over the side. It's amazing how high those crocs can jump just to get their mouths round a chicken head!




The third and final display piece we attended was the feeding of the rest of the crocs. Once again you can see they know whats happening as they all start heading over the where the keepers are when they see them. One keeper heads off down to the side of the pen and distracts some of the crocs while others are fed. It seems they can get a bit nasty at feeding time, so much so that one of the crocs had actually lost both front feet in a previous incident.





After the feeding had finished we decided we had had enough and it was time to make a move. It was about 30 degrees at the time and very humid, so the cars air conditioning was a welcome change.

We headed back down to Cairns to get some lunch and have a last wander round. It wasn't really much better by day than it was by night. Matt said there were lots of attractive young lady backpackers wearing very little around the pool area but I can't say as I noticed ;).

We grabbed some food and then decided the only thing that would help to deal with the heat was a nice James Boag's fresh from a bucket of Ice.... mmmmmmmmm :)