Crocodile Farm

Tuesday 15 January



Still cant go out to the reef, too windy.



We went to a commercial crocodile farm this afternoon which seemed to be in the middle of nowhere and came back on a river boat all the way back to Cairns which was a lovely journey during which we saw crocodiles along the river bank.The farm occupies a large natural area of waterways and swamp like lakes where the crocs build large nests of mounds of dirt to lay their eggs.A team of 3 go into this area searching for the nests and remove the eggs to protect them and breed the crocs.We were told that 98% of all crocs in the wild will die in the first few days as they are eaten by others or the eggs are taken by predators so that in fact all the crocs here that are farmed and killed for the skins would not have survived in the wild.Don't know if we believe this or not.The guy who took us around said that Hermes were their biggest buyer and talked of huge amounts of money people pay for fashion items made from a part of the skin.He didnt like it too much when I said I thought the skins looked much better on the crocs!.It was all a bit weird plus we got bitten alive by all the bugs and the heat was extreme.Great.