A Young Crocodile's Adventure: Rescued After 30 Hours
A young freshwater crocodile, yet to be named, had an adventurous weekend traveling down a suburban creek in Australia, far from its tropical habitat. The reptile was captured on Sunday night in a delicate operation in Ironbark Creek, Newcastle, after being first spotted behind a Bunnings store in Wallsend on Saturday afternoon.
The police called in the manager of the nearby Australian Reptile Park, Billy Collett, and his team to assist in the capture. However, repeated efforts to grab the metre-long crocodile from the creekside pond proved challenging. Collett and his team returned on Sunday night with a tinny boat, paddles, head torches, and a high level of patience.
Despite no sightings on Sunday, the team continued their search for about an hour until they started to lose hope. Just as they were about to reach the Hunter Wetlands three kilometres downstream, they spotted the crocodile's eye sign. Collett quietly paddled over and, in a swift move, did a swan dive off the boat, got under the crocodile, grabbed it, and secured it.
"It was the best feeling," Collett said. The reptile park shared an image of an exuberant Collett chest-deep in the creek with the rescued crocodile on Monday afternoon, after the park's vet team gave the creature a clean bill of health.
Currently in quarantine at the Central Coast park, the crocodile will remain under staff care while authorities investigate how it ended up in NSW's second-largest city, far from its natural habitat. Collett believes the unnamed crocodile would not have survived in the salty creek, especially during winter. The park's marketing manager, Alex Martinovich, suggested that the crocodile had likely been dumped after being someone's illegal pet.
"She's just traveling around looking for somewhere safe to go," Martinovich told AAP. "People get these pets because they think it will be so cool, but once a croc is a metre long, even a freshwater one, it's a pretty big animal."
