INVASION OF THE CROCODILES - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 243

FIGURE 15.1 Baines and Humphrey killing an alligator on the Horse Shoe Flats, near
Curiosity Peak, Victoria River (Thomas Baines, 1857).
Source: Collection of the Royal Geographic Society.
intermittent interest in crocodiles, but curiously most stories concern crocodiles
elsewhere in the British Empire - particularly in Africa, India and (then) Ceylon.
It is after more determined efforts were made to establish a cattle industry in the
late 1800s that saltwater crocodiles became objects of greater notice - and were
routinely shot as vermin (Webb and Manolis, 1998: 131, 132).
The wetlands of the coastal regions of Western Australia, Northern Territory,
and western Queensland, remain little developed, and together with the arid
interior, form part of the mythology of the Outback. The myth of wilderness
persists for this region. Alongside and imbricated with it is the equally powerful
myth that Aboriginal peoples have always trodden lightly on the earth and have
had no significant deleterious impacts on the biota since their arrival 50-45 kya. If
it is true that the first humans to arrive in Australia had a hand in the extinction of
the megafauna, then it may be that the mekosuchine crocodylians were among
those species rendered extinct with their assistance. That said, the first time, inasfar
as we are aware, that the country's surviving crocodile species have been threatened
with extinction was when they were decimated by commercial hunters following
the Second World War. Most of these hunters were of settler stock. They made
extensive use of Aboriginal trackers and drew on their local knowledge (ibid., 1998:
134).
Freshwater crocodiles were hunted from the 1960s, and were soon decimated
as they congregate in large numbers during the dry season. The wisdom of hunting