Lap of Oz: Day 53 Crocodylus Park

Day 53

Today we spent the whole day at Crocodylus Park.

We arrived right on opening time (9am) looking forward to a great day. On arrival, you are given a map of the place and a wrist band for the cruise, if you choose to go on it. We chose to go on the 1pm cruise so that we wouldn’t miss out on the Reptile Handling at 11:30am. The boys just love holding snakes!

On walking into the park, the boys came across this fun sign to stick their heads in.

The lions were due to have breakfast at 9:30am, so we headed in their direction, passing through the crocodile feeding pens on our way. There were some huge crocodiles in these pens. We revisited these later as part of the croc feeding tours, so will tell you more later on in this post.

On arriving at the lions, we were very surprised to see two white male lions. We haven’t see white lions before, so this was awesome. The cages these lions were in, were quite small, but apparently the new ones planned are supposed to be state-of-the-art. Wish they had them finished for our visit.

When watching the lions, you had to be careful where you stand. Sometimes they lift up their tails and pee unexpectedly and they can shoot a long way, as we just happened to find out.

Then we had a quick walk around a bit more of the zoo on our way to the first croc feeding tour at 10am (Other times are 12pm, 2pm and 4pm).

We saw the Timor Ponies,

a couple of Maned Wolves,

had a great time watching the meerkats,

and saw an agile wallaby have something to eat.

At 10am, we were a little disappointed at the Croc Feeding Tour as the chain broke, so they were unable to feed the crocs in Bellairs Lagoon. We were there again for the 12pm tour and the guy couldn’t get any crocs to jump which again was disappointing as this would have been great to see.

This croc feeding tour also includes feeding the crocs in the breeding pens. While walking along, we learned a great deal about the saltwater crocs, Crocodylus Park looks after.

Our boys (with another boy) were luck enough to feed a female crocodile in one of the feeding pens. They loved this!!

Watching these crocs jump for their food was amazing.

As was seeing this rare ‘white’ croc. It is a Leucistic crocodile, meaning it still has some pigment in its skin. Due to this condition, this crocodile would have trouble surviving in the wild as it would not be able to camouflage very well.

We also saw a crocodile that it believed to be around 80 years old!

Then we were shown the exotic crocs: the New Guinea Freshwater Crocodiles and the Philippine Crocodiles before seeing the raising pens and the Attack Lagoon.

There were 524 crocodiles in the Attack Lagoon. It was amazing!!

At the end of this tour, you are given the opportunity to hold a small saltwater crocodile, which our boys had been looking forward to for weeks.

We waited around here for the reptile handling at 11:30am as the boys wanted to hold another snake. I think it was called a coastal carpet python. It was a much livelier snake to the previous ones the boys have held, constantly on the move, so they were a little more careful this time.

While waiting for the cruise at 1pm, we went for a walk through the Museum, which contains 4 decades of research. There were lots of crocodile bones, some turtles, snakes and lots of reading about crocodiles.

It was interesting to see and read about the crocodile ‘Sweetheart’ that we saw in the museum in Darwin. We saw his massive heart and

what he had in his stomach when he died.

Then it was time for the cruise. This man-made lagoon is home to 40 saltwater crocodiles; 31 females and 9 males. We found the guide to be very knowledgeable and we learnt a lot about the natural habitat of a crocodile as well as lots about the plants and birds that also call this place home.

On returning to the Park after the cruise, we happened to see a dingo being walked. The boys enjoyed patting it.

By this time it was getting late, so we had a look at the other animals that we had missed, monkeys, wallabies, cassowaries, emu, cockatoos, ocelot, baboon, tiger and more before we headed off.