The Killer Koala (9 page)

'Do
many people get taken by crocodiles, then?'

'Nah.
Few of the Murri kids, old people. No, people die lots of ways out
here and then the dogs and the birds and the ants and the pigs clean
'em up pretty quickly
—
often
don't even find bones, but you usually get a bit of clothing. Now we
got all this bloke's clothing, but it looks as though he took
everything off himself. Even his wristwatch was in the pocket of his
pants.'

'How
exactly would a crocodile get him on dry land, or even in a little
creek? Surely he'd hear it coming.'

'Nah.
They can move like a galloping horse for a short distance. Seen one
jump out of the water over on the coast once and run after a bloody
great cow. She didn't have a chance. She caught wind of him all right
and started to gallop away, but he ran her down, grabbed her by the
back leg and dragged her into the water. Ever seen the big lizards
run? Croc's as fast as that. Only for a short distance, though.'

He
rolled himself a cigarette. 'Bloody awful animals, crocs. The big
ones. I don't know why they're protected. I nearly walked into one
last year. That's another way they get you
—
they
just lie doggo and you walk into them and bang! you're gone. This one
I struck wasn't hungry. He just stood up on his hind legs and
bellowed at me, like a bull. Frightened buggery out of me.'

'What'd
you do?'

'Blew
his guts out. Makes 'em easy to kill when they rear up like that.
Belly's the softest part. You can bounce a .303 off their backs if
you hit 'em at any sort of angle.'

You
never know how much to believe of what anybody tells you about
animals up north. I've heard dozens of stories about snakes chasing
and catching a man on a motorcycle, buffaloes that charged and
wrecked cars, pigs of unbelievable size and ferocity disembowelling
horses. However, my policeman seemed to know all about crocodiles.

'Should
hear a bull croc when they 're mating. Horrible sound. He bellows all
the time. It's not like an ordinary mating. The bull bails up a few
females in a creek and just rapes 'em. Rough as buggery, they are.
'Course, the female's just as bad. They lay their eggs and then hang
around for a long while and God help anything that goes near that
nest. Then they just bugger off and leave 'em. The baby croc comes
out of the shell snapping and growling and hissing like a young
dragon. Nasty brutes. Anyhow . . .'

He
stood up and tossed his cigarette butt into the ashes of the
campfire.

'I
suppose I'd better get along and see if I can find this one. "The
body or the bloke," my boss said.'

He
came back again about mid-afternoon and because I felt that I had got
to know him well by then, I offered him a beer. He accepted and
rolled a cigarette, lit it, drank some of his beer and squatted on
his haunch.

'No
luck?' I said.

'Yes,
well, sort of.'

'Did
you find him?'

'Found
his legs.'

There
seemed to be a sudden stillness in the pandanus clump as the three
laconic words emerged with shocking force. It took me several moments
to accept that this was reality and then all I managed to do was
repeat his words.

'Found
his legs?'

'Yeah.
About five minutes' walk away from his clothes. In the scrub.'

'I
see.' It was a subject simultaneously repulsive and intriguing. I
felt a little ill, but I wanted to know more.

'What
. . . I mean . . . how did you find the
—
ah
—
legs?'

'Heard
the blowflies.' I wished I hadn't asked.

Jack
puffed away at his cigarette.

'Wouldn't
have thought we'd find anything,' he said thoughtfully. 'Usually a
croc will take its kill off to its lair if it doesn't swallow it on
the spot.'

'It
was a crocodile, then,' I said foolishly.

'Oh
yeah, thought of that. These legs weren't cut off. You can see the
bite marks very clearly. Big bugger he must be.'

'Well,
what do you think happened?'

'Oh,
it's pretty obvious. The poor bastard was probably sitting in the
creek cooling off and the croc grabbed him. There wasn't enough water
to drown him
—
that's what
crocs usually do, hold their catch under water until it drowns
—
so
it went off with him, probably heading for a deep pool. Then it
stopped on the way and ate him.'

The
words were almost impossible to accept. It was difficult to realise
that while I had been scouring the scrub for specimens this frightful
drama had been enacted almost within shouting distance.

'But
why leave the legs?'

'Dunno.
That puzzles me a bit. Maybe it didn't eat him there. Maybe he was
still kicking and it just took time off to kill him. Wouldn't think
so
—
grass was all flattened
and matted, but the ants and the birds had been there so you couldn't
tell much.'

'So
what do you do now?'

'Take
the legs back to town.' He nodded at his vehicle and I realised for
the first time that the gruesome relics would be in it. 'Pick up some
geli and go and get the croc.'

I
was taking rather long pauses between sentences, but that was all
right because slow conversations are normal in the north.

'Will
it be easy to find?'

'Should
be. He wouldn't get far after a decent feed. He'll find a pool and
lay up for a while until he digests it. Got to get him before that
happens.'

I
couldn't see this. It struck me as much more seemly to allow the
crocodile to digest his kill rather than recover the awful remains
for burial, but it wasn't my business.

'How
will you go about looking for him?'

'Just
follow the stream down and blow every deep pool we come to. Shouldn't
take long. No point in trying for more than a week
—
there'd
be nothing left to find inside the croc after that.'

'Are
you going alone?'

'His
mates are coming with me. Want to come along? Should be interesting.'

Whenever
I do something I'm slightly ashamed of, I use the excuse of the
writer's instinct, but it was probably only morbid interest that led
me to accept.

Jack
picked me up early next morning and we drove down the track in his
vehicle.

The
two civilians were waiting for us at their camp and I was surprised
to find how cheerful they were. I hadn't even known the missing man,
but I found his dismemberment a sobering event. Perhaps they were
relieved that there was no longer any reasonable suggestion that they
had disposed of him themselves. Jack made no attempt to introduce
them. He obviously didn't think much of them. They seemed to accept
this as natural and kept to themselves.

Jack
took a pack, which he explained contained gelignite, and a heavy
rifle from his vehicle. The civilians carried old army rifles and
small packs. We all began walking into the scrub.

Jack
and I went first and the two civilians followed some little way
behind. This arrangement just happened, but I had the impression Jack
wanted it that way. He was a man of considerable presence and he
managed to convey the atmosphere that he was the professional, I was
the welcome observer, and the other two were barely tolerated as
interested parties.

'That's
the tree where we found his clothes,' said Jack after we had walked
for a few minutes. It was a large pandanus palm, but unremarkable.
'There's the creek.' He pointed to a trickle of water that emerged
from the scrub and formed a very narrow small channel through a
clearing. 'My guess is he just sat down in that to get wet. The croc
probably shot out of the scrub and grabbed him. Or the croc might
have been there first and the poor bastard just walked straight into
it. Come on, I'll show you where we found the legs.'

We
pushed our way into the scrub.

'You're
not worried that the crocodile might be still close by? Or another
one?' I asked.

'Wouldn't
be another one. This fellow'll be a big bull. He'll have cleared out
anything else. Wouldn't even let the females around this time of the
year.'

We
marched along for a few minutes. The flies were very bad and it was
hot.

'That's
where we found the legs,' said Jack eventually.

I
saw a patch of grass that could have been disturbed recently, but it
meant nothing.

'Now
I reckon,' said Jack, 'that the croc got him back there either at the
creek or somewhere between the creek and his clothes. Now, we found
the legs here, so obviously the croc came this way. He'd be heading
for a pool and a pool would be on the creek, so my guess is that the
creek winds around and if we follow a line running from the clothes
to here, we should hit the creek, and we follow that until we find
some pools.'

He
was not inviting comment, just telling me what he was doing.

We
went on into the scrub. Jack pushed briskly and apparently
unconcernedly forward, but he did unsling the rifle from his shoulder
and carry it with his finger on the safety catch.

He
was right, as such men usually are, and we soon struck the stream. We
went on in single file, walking in the water with Jack in front
—
the
rifle unashamedly held ready
—
then
me, feeling nervous, then the two civilians following very closely
behind. Once Jack turned sharply and said to them, 'Are those guns
cocked?'

One
admitted that his was.

'Well,
uncock it and put the guns over your shoulders.' It hadn't occurred
to me to worry about two men walking behind me with loaded rifles,
but I realised I should have been worried and was glad of Jack's
forethought.

In
about twenty minutes the stream widened out into a large stagnant
pool lined by pandanus palms and several large gums. The surface was
covered with green weed which had been disturbed.

'Could
well be in there,' said Jack, and made us all walk around the pool
looking for crocodile tracks. There was a lot of grass which had been
trodden down by something, but there was also buffalo and pig dung.

'If
he's in there, he might have a cache under the bank,' said Jack.
That's what they often do with cattle, take 'em into their hole and
let 'em rot a bit. But this pool doesn't look big enough for a
permanent nest to me. If he's in there, he's just slipped in when he
heard us coming.'

I
looked at the motionless surface of the pool and wondered whether
just below the opaque surface lay a huge reptile with a man in its
stomach.

'We'll
blow it up anyway,' said Jack, and busied himself with his pack.

His
technique was simple enough. He placed a few sticks of gelignite with
a detonator in a container. Then he attached a length of wire through
which he could send a charge from a small battery-powered plunger. He
tossed the container into the centre of the pool and fed the wire out
as it sank.

'You
could almost stand up in there,' he said when the wire stopped
running out. 'It's going to be a hell of a bang in water as shallow
as that. We'd better keep back a bit.'

'Will
the charge kill him?' I asked.

'Probably.
It'll push him flat and wreck his guts. He'd be near enough to dead.'

'He's
not likely to come rushing out?'

'No
way. He might stick his head up after a while to have a look and see
whether there's anything worth eating. But he probably won't be
interested in more food at the moment. He'll just want to be left
alone.'

At
times I thought there was something terribly coldblooded about Jack's
attitude, but I suppose it was the only way to go about the job.

We
all went back a few paces from the bank and I set off the charge.

It
was a hell of a bang.

A
vast gout of muddy water and weed shot high into the air, one bank
collapsed and a large gum toppled slowly over and fell into the pool.
Two large catfish and a barramundi and an eel suddenly were flopping
and wriggling on the grass at our feet and we were drenched by water
with a vaguely rotten smell.

There
was no sign of a crocodile.

'Thought
that pool would be a bit shallow for him,' said Jack ' We'll try
further down. Bit too much geli there too
—
you
can't judge it unless you know how deep the pool is all over and it's
no good probing because there's often holes or tunnels in the sides.'

'He
couldn't be in there and dead?'

'Nah.
If he was in the pool itself, he'd float up. If he was in a cave in
the bank, the top would have blown off. The top of the cave's always
above the surface of the water.'

It
did strike me that tramping around the banks of a pool that might
have contained earth caves sheltering crocodiles a hair's breadth
from our feet was not exactly prudent, but Jack wasn't worried and he
gave every indication of being careful and competent.