Crocodylus Park

Crocodylus park offers a great opportunity to get up close and personal with that great NT icon the Saltwater Crocodile. And so long as you are not an animal rights advocate than you will probably enjoy your trip, here a few of the photos I took when I visited as well as a few of my thoughts on the experience.

The park has a very down to earth feel and fits in well with the Territory way of life, there is no unnecessary pomp, and if you happen to be visiting Darwin in the hope of absorbing some of our unique culture than you will be in for a treat here. It is kind of hard to describe what exactly it is that I mean by this, but I suppose that is the way that it always is with culture, ask an anthropologist to describe culture to you, and they will either spew forth a 30 minute discourse on the ambiguity of the term or perhaps they may simply gnash there teeth at you before launching into a diatribe. Suffice to say the park is very down to earth but at the same time it is very obviously a professional and well funded operation.



Entry was $25 Australian dollars, which is neither particularly expensive nor cheap, and I suppose it is all relative to your circumstances, but You certainly do get to see a lot of animals for your penny's, and there are also guided tours in the mornings midday and afternoons, where the guide will feed the crocodiles, make them jump in the air and try and get them to play up for the camera, Being in the middle of the tourist season when I went the tour was rather full, but it was Nice to see the guide conscious of this and make an effort to ensure that everybody had an opportunity to get some close up shots of the big Lizards being fed.


Not that there were that many Big Crocodiles to see, as a a child I went to the Crocodile farm on quite a few occasions and as I recall they did seem to have a few more of the really, big Crocs it also would have been Nice to have seen the large Crocodiles from a better angle, while It was still possible to get some decent photos from the angle at which they were viewed it would have been better to get a straight on look down the lizards throat.




There were many more medium and small sized Crocodiles then there were large ones, and some of these did provide some nice photo opportunity's where the crocodiles were literally lying on top of each other and occasionally having a bit of a Biff, many of the crocodiles showed visible scars testament to the vicious nature of these ancient creatures.


There was actually a lot more to the park than just Crocodiles with a host of native animal on display, such as wallabies emus a wombat Dingoes and also a number of exotic imports. If you want to get some nice close up photos of tigers or Lions than this would be a great place to do so. I remember going to the Auckland zoo and having to push my 10x optical zoom to the limit just to get near the tiger that, was hidden way at the back of an enclosure seemingly designed to help hide the Tiger from the Zoo's visitors.


As I said there is no such problem here and all of the big cats as well as the monkeys are in plain sight. I was not all that happy seeing the dingoes they seemed to be rather unhappy in there little enclosure, I guess that was the only real concern that I had with the park, while it is not something that is particularly unique to this nature park, it does still trouble my conscience a little to see all of these animals enslaved for our viewing pleasure.

At least the animals do get a steady supply of food, there are many dogs that suffer a lot worse at the hands of there masters, particularly in many remote parts of the territory, where people have enough trouble looking after themselves let alone there dogs.

There were many Crocodile products to be found in the gift shop in particular there were some really nice looking Crocodile purses it is odd that I noticed them because I assure you I am not really inclined to ponder the fashion sense of purses but for some reason or other they caught my eye and they looked very fashionable. There is quite a collaboration between the Charles Darwin University and the park and it would not surprise me if some talented design students had gone to work on a range of crocodile skin products.

If you feel that a crocodile skull or crocodile paw or practically any other bodily member of a Crocodile would make your home feel complete than, you will be delighted by the array of Crocodile body parts on offer at the gift shop.