After 82 years of a life dedicated to saltwater crocodiles, John Lever nonetheless fondly recollects the primary “saltie” he ever caught on Rockhampton’s Fitzroy River, about 500km north of Brisbane.
The 12 months was 1982, the crocodile was a three-metre lengthy feminine and he or she’d simply eaten “a stunning labrador canine” from a market backyard within the central Queensland metropolis.
Greater than 4 many years later, Lever runs a crocodile farm residence to greater than 3,000 of the world’s largest dwelling reptiles on an mangrove-fringed island in a swampy estuary about 25 kilometres east of the central Queensland metropolis generally known as the meat capital of Australia and, as of this week, formally set to host the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Video games rowing occasions.
Offered that World Rowing and the Worldwide Olympic Committee indicators off on the plan – introduced by Queensland premier David Crusafulli in Brisbane on Tuesday – that’s.
However it could not simply be probably the most feared apex predator of the tropical north that derails that plan.
On the eve of Crusafulli’s a lot anticipated announcement, the nationwide broadcaster reported the chief government of Rowing Australia, Sarah Prepare dinner, as saying her organisation was involved the Fitzroy wouldn’t meet World Rowing technical specs.
On Monday the ABC printed Prepare dinner’s feedback {that a} “key standards” of an ordinary worldwide course was that “there must be no stream”.
“The difficulty for us at this level is that we all know that World Rowing and the [International Olympic Committee] haven’t but been consulted in relation to that venue,” Prepare dinner stated.
“So, we merely don’t have the technical evaluation to know whether or not it’s a viable choice or not.”
Prepare dinner was extra relaxed about crocs, nevertheless, noting Rockhampton’s lively rowing group and use as an Olympic coaching venue, whereas acknowledging the lethal reptiles might show “fairly stunning” for worldwide guests.
The Australian rowing staff educated within the Rockhampton waterway earlier than the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and plans to take action once more earlier than the Los Angeles Video games.
However it’s not simply foreigners shocked by the very fact Olympic athletes shall be requested to compete on water that even the native rowing membership president acknowledges is pure crocodile habitat.
Simply hours earlier than the plan was formally unveiled, Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, was requested on radio what he thought concerning the then unofficial experiences of Rockhampton as an Olympic rowing venue – and if he himself would swim the Fitzroy.
“I’m undecided how wise a proposition that’s,” Albanese informed Brisbane’s B105.
“My understanding is it was kind of listed eight out of eight as choices, and if there have been 15 choices, it will have been 15.”
The prime minister went on to say that Rockhampton was a “implausible place” and the Fitzroy a “nice river” – to “stroll alongside”.
“However I’m undecided that having rowing there, though I’ve acquired to say, individuals may break world data,” he stated.
“They’d need to go fairly rapidly wouldn’t they?”
However crocodile fears had been dismissed by the Brisbane Olympic chief, Andrew Liveris, who referred to as for a “can do, not can’t do” mindset at Tuesday’s stay announcement.
“There are sharks within the ocean and we nonetheless do browsing,” Liveris stated.
“Creatures beneath the water … that’s a bit form of Hollywoodish, we’ll depart LA to fret about that.”
Rockhampton Fitzroy Rowing membership president, Sarah Black, informed a parliamentary inquiry into internet hosting the Olympics in February that Rockhampton rowers “have processes in place” for reporting crocodile sightings, working round crocodile behaviour and with crocodile managers.
“The Fitzroy River is a pure habitat for crocodiles, we’re effectively conscious of that,” she stated.
“[But] I feel a few of the experiences within the media have been sensationalised, with feedback round it being ‘crocodile infested’. It’s actually threat managed and [that is] one thing that our sport does fairly effectively, frequently.”
Lever, the crocodile farmer who was answerable for eradicating crocodiles from areas of human habitation for a decade within the Nineteen Eighties till it was taken over by state wildlife rangers within the early Nineteen Nineties, stated the Fitzroy River delta was on the southern extremity of the saltwater crocodile‘s vary.
“Formally, whenever you have a look at them, that’s the place the map stops,” he says.
Lever thinks the Olympic resolution is “great”, describing the Fitzroy as a “spectacular” tapestry of centuries previous paperbark timber, floodplains, islands, swamps and homes.
The state’s atmosphere division must rezone the Fitzroy from “focused” to “lively removing” he stated, which means all crocodiles, no matter measurement or behaviour, had been focused for removing.
“Then it wants fixed monitoring by surveys within the Fitzroy River,” he stated. “After which, in all probability, you’d even go to the extent of placing out a few traps there and baiting them up as soon as per week, simply to see if something pops up within the space, in order that it would get caught.
“It’s all doable.”
In truth, he says, a lot of it’s already being performed, pointing to official crocodile removals in recent times. Much less humanely, in 2017, a large 5.2-metre male crocodile was discovered floating within the Fitzroy after it was shot within the head.
However Lever stated “none of those crocodiles truly posed any kind of an issue” and that individuals frequently swim and use the river with out being attacked.
He factors to the Rockhampton’s crest, courting again to the 1800s, upon which the one animal is a crocodile – standing on rocks above a quadrant of photos depicting metropolis’s historical past of mining, delivery, equipment and commerce – as proof to the longstanding coexistence of people and crocodiles within the area.
Though Lever admits the town’s founders did “need to kill loads of crocodiles to make it protected for individuals to load and unload boats there”.
Whereas there are crocodiles answerable for deadly assaults farther north, the place they happen in far higher numbers, he stated crocodiles had been outstanding creatures that had existed unchanged over hundreds of thousands of years, however had been “a lot misjudged” over comparatively latest ones.
“The half that actually acquired me besotted with them was their parental behaviour,” he stated. “These are pretty, pretty, mild dinosaurs with their offspring.”
This article by Joe Hinchliffe was first printed by The Guardian on 25 March 2025. Lead Picture: Rockhampton rowers already ‘have processes in place’ for reporting crocodile sightings, a parliamentary inquiry was informed in February. {Photograph}: Richard Wainwright/AAP.
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