INVASION OF THE CROCODILES - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 242

to have migrated from Africa or Southeast Asia within the past 5 million years (early
Pliocene), and the freshwater ( C. johnstoni ) since the Pleistocene. Both species
predate humans, as a species, by hundreds of thousands of years.
The point is that our decisions on time scales for nativeness are relatively
arbitrary, given how the range of selection alters what qualifies as native or
introduced. If we consider the detachment of Australia from Antarctica as 'ground
zero', then arguably all of the indigenous crocodilians are extinct. If we consider
the period before hominids existed, i.e. early Pliocene and before, then saltwater
crocodiles may qualify. If it is to be before humans arrived in Australia, then both
of Australia's current species of crocodiles are comfortably included. In practice,
both species are regarded as native by natural scientists.
Humans and crocodiles in history
In Australia, crocodiles have been regarded as both sacred and as natural resources by
Aboriginal peoples from the earliest period of human settlement. European settlers
largely ignored them until cattle became established in northern Australia from the
late nineteenth century, after which they were regarded as vermin. Crocodile
populations were decimated following the Second World War, in response to high
demand for skins by the fashion and leather goods industries. Following protection
in the 1960s and 1970s, populations rebounded, and from the 1980s an incentive-
driven conservation strategy has been followed, encouraging sustainable harvesting
of wild crocodiles and their eggs. 'Problem animals' are removed or killed.
Freshwater crocodiles appear in the well-known Aboriginal rock art of the
Arnhem Land plateau from around 20,000 years ago. Saltwater crocs appear in this
art following the post-glacial rise in sea levels which ushered in the 'estuarine
period', from c. 8,000 years ago (Department of Arts and Museums, Northern
Territory, 2013). Crocodiles feature in the dreamtime stories and songlines of
several northern Australian Aboriginal clans and continue to be of totemic signifi-
cance to some clans today (for instance, the Gunwinggu in the Alligator rivers
region and the Gumatj and Madarrpa clans of the Yolngu in East Arnhem Land).
Some believe that the spirits of the dead are contained in the bodies of certain large
crocodiles and the deaths of such crocodiles cause widespread mourning.
The British colonised Australia in 1788, and by the mid-nineteenth century a
conception of a settler Australian identity was emerging that connected urban
Australians with the bush. This was later reflected in the literary works of A. B.
'Banjo' Paterson, Henry Lawson and others. What is striking about the poems and
novels which feature the Australian bush, at least to an interested alien like myself,
is the absence of crocodiles. A rare exception in the Arts is a series of paintings by
Thomas Baines in the mid-1850s, notably the striking painting 'Baines and
Humphrey killing an alligator on the . . . Victoria River' (Figure 15.1) (1857). 2 In
the exploration literature, there are a few mentions of crocodiles as encountered
on naval explorations of the rivers, but even here we seldom read of notable
concentrations of crocodiles. A scan of Australian newspapers to 1900 reveals an