One night out croc-spotting in the Northern Territory

Guide Noel with a croc nicknamed Mouse, at Katherine Gorge in Nitmiluk National Park. Picture / Pamela Wade

Here's a handy tip for the faint-hearted: when you go croc-spotting down the Katherine River in the dark, don't wear shorts. In trousers you'll avoid mozzie bites, sure, but more importantly, when covered up your temptingly fleshy calves will be less likely to attract a much bigger bite - like from a 2m-long wild fresh-water crocodile misleadingly called Mouse.

Mouse was a bit of a surprise. We had been on our flat-bottomed boat for about an hour, each armed with a torch.

"Aim the torch at the edge of the river and look down the beam. If there's a croc there, you'll see two little red lights - that's his eyes," drawled Noel, our tour guide.

Two red lights was about as much as I expected to see, and to be honest, sitting in a tin boat on a quiet river in the pitch dark, I would have been happy with that.

In the Northern Territory, there's too much croc-talk for comfort. All the one-upmanship between tour guides, redundant signs at beauty spots requesting you not to interfere with the crocodiles, postcards with yawning toothy grins on them.

After a while, you get a little twitchy, especially when you're a soft Kiwi who's never had to cope with anything more life-threatening than a weta.

All around the boat, the others were seeing heaps of red lights, but all I could see were the stars reflected in the calm black water.

Eventually I got focused, and felt a thrill when I spotted what I knew were cold, yellow eyes looking right back at me.

I was there in the dry, when the river was 12m lower than in the wet season, so there was minimal chance of meeting one of the 7m saltwater maneaters (although traps were permanently set further down the river, baited with pigs' heads, and regularly checked). These were all freshwater crocodiles, growing to a maximum of 2m and, with narrower muzzles and weaker jaws, not considered much of a threat to people. These things are relative, I decided, tucking my elbows inside the boat.

Luckily, our group was small, so the boat just scraped over the sand-bar Noel had warned us about ("If we get stuck, we usually ask the women to get out") and we made it safely to the picnic site, set up with tables, chairs, barbecue and a stunning ceiling of stars - so many and so bright we could have managed without the lamps.

We were relaxing with a glass of wine when Noel called from further along the bank. We trailed cheerfully over to see this mouse he'd found - and several people shrieked when they found themselves standing with bare legs just a couple of metres away from a fully grown, wild and evidently hungry crocodile.

Noel chucked him a piece of the same scotch fillet we were about to eat, and the hollow "clump" of the croc's jaws echoed over the black water.

It was no great comfort to hear Noel tell us that crocodiles can move at 18 km/h, that "lizard" bites always get infected, and that he didn't trust Mouse at all.

"I don't know what I'd do if he tried anything," he admitted. "Here I am with this tin bucket and a spindly little stick."

We all took a step back.

"But he'll be more scared of us than we are of him."

I have never found this a convincing claim, but it must be said that Noel hasn't lost a client yet, or even part of one. It was certainly the high point of the evening to be up close and personal with Mouse, and we were all buzzing when we went back for our barbecue dinner and billy tea.

There had been much more cynicism earlier that day when I was in another boat further up the river. On a two-hour cruise through the lower part of the spectacular Katherine Gorge our guide had interrupted her geology talk and whizzed over to the base of a towering orange cliff.

She whispered, "You're really lucky, guys - look at this." We all gazed dutifully at the small crocodile draped over a rock, its mouth open, motionless.

Frankly, I thought it was stuffed. Well, you know these tour guides, they'll do anything for a laugh. I've been fooled before.

So I took a photo for the record and then switched my attention back to the stunning sandstone cliffs, up to 60m high. Their orange, red and yellow colouring glowed in the late-afternoon sunlight and the air was so clear the shadows were razor-sharp.

Girls in canary-yellow canoes glided past sandy beaches where the low sun threw into relief the belly-slides left by crocodiles. We got out to view Aboriginal rock-paintings that were 10,000 to 15,000 years old.

The guide explained they were dated partly by the fact that they didn't depict the barramundi known to have entered the river system at a later date. "Maybe they were just too hard to draw," suggested some wag at the back.

On the return journey (past, I have to say, a now-unoccupied rock) we were told how during the Australia Day floods in 1998, the water level was 21m higher, with enough water flowing through the gorge to fill Sydney Harbour in eight hours - what seemed another tall tale but later substantiated in the quaint and quirky Katherine Museum.

Here, beside exhibits as varied as the 1934 Gypsy Moth used by the territory's first Flying Doctor and a baby's mobile made from painted empty sardine tins, there is a riveting display of photographs of the flood and a half-hour video of news reports tracing the rise of the water and the evacuations of evacuation centres.

"It seems inevitable that the town is going under," says a shocked announcer.

There were scenes of entire families, dogs and all, camping on their roofs, of a digger clearing mud inside the supermarket, of the whole town's worldly goods laid out on the roadside to dry like a gigantic inorganic collection. The only missing report was of the saltwater crocodile I'd heard that had been spotted swimming up the main street to the butcher's. I knew I couldn't trust those guides.

* Pamela Wade was a guest of Northern Territory Tourist Commission and flew courtesy of Qantas. 

Checklist: Northern Territory

Getting there

Fly Qantas to Darwin (www.qantas.co.nz) then drive 300km to Katherine down the Stuart Highway (Territory Thrifty Rent a Car at www.rentacar.com.au)

Accommodation

Stay at the friendly and comfortable Donkey Camp B&B (Lot 3233, Gorge Rd, Katherine, donkeycamp@hotmail.com) TOURS

Tours of the Katherine Gorge and the Crocodile Night Adventure can be booked through Travel North (www.travelnorth.com.au)

Katherine Museum, Gorge Road, Katherine (open every day, hours vary)

Further information

Try Katherine Region Tourist Association (www.krta.com.au) and Northern Territory Tourist Commission (www.nttc.com.au)