The Write Stuff: Another croc in the tropics

Chris Harrison | August 27th, 2011

Flags at half mast – I got the bad news just yesterday. You know it happens but you never think it will happen to you. You can go through life trying to avoid it but sometimes that just brings it on. Perhaps it did in my case.

Oh well, I’ll grin and bear it. There are other people out there going through much worse. And if I think about it calmly, rationally, my mother-in-law is only coming to stay for six weeks.

I am joking, of course. I love her (cooking) dearly. She’s southern Italian, you see, so her natural habitat is a kitchen and I wouldn’t want to do anything that puts her out of that comfort zone. So while she’s here she can cook, cook, cook. I’ve already set the table. And she will be afforded every luxury during her cooking… err… during her holiday. I’ve even put an extra pillow on her camp bed by the stove.

It’s the least I can do. Poor woman’s already nervous enough given it’s her first inter-continental flight. But it’s not the long journey that’s got her spooked. Like many foreigners who come to our shores, it’s the deadly wildlife that’s got her arthritic knees knocking together.

It hasn’t helped that since I started work at The Cairns Post and have been sharing weblinks to give her an idea of where her darling daughter is living, our bloodthirsty online team have been reminding her of the frightening fact that FNQ has got the biggest, baddest and best crocs in the country (www.cairns.com.au/crocoff).

"But not in our back garden!" my wife, Daniela, reassures her
on Skype.

And then, of course, there was the recent critter caught wandering past the Showgrounds, as though he’d taken in the show and was now on his casual way to the cinema.

I was glad they didn’t kill him. All they would have found in his belly was a showbag or two and some fairy floss. It’s carnival time for all Cairns residents.

It’s ironic that my wife laughs in the face of her mother’s fears. When she first ventured to Oz she was even more petrified. This is partly because in Italy the only creatures that kill you are fellow motorists, and partly because the only Australian news to make Europe (apart from Kevin Rudd’s inadvertent following of porn sites on Twitter) is when Steve Irwin dies tragically in the deep, or some previously anonymous foreign honeymooner gets taken by a shark.

During my 10 years overseas, the most common reason I heard for not visiting Australia was the perception that death awaits you Down Under. Like most stereotypes, it’s based on ignorance.

Some faint-hearted foreigners are even convinced there are crocodiles in the Sydney CBD, though they might be getting confused with the hedge fund managers.

It’s not just the Italians who are scared of Aussie animals. I was once playing golf at Yorkeys Knob with a visitor from Yorkshire who was too frightened to follow his errant drive under a tree because a kookaburra was staring at him from its branches.

"It’s the beak! It’s the beak!" whined the petrified Pom, who inched towards the eucalypt while I laughed louder than the
kookaburra.

Hopefully my mother-in-law will have a less stressful introduction to the sunburnt country than her daughter. On her first visit to Oz I took Daniela to a rainforest retreat called Binna Burra in Queensland’s Lamington National Park, to showcase my country’s unique flora and, unintentionally, its fauna.

After a swim in a rockpool at the base of a waterfall, where an eel frightened her from the water and a spider scared her back in, we were on the home stretch of an afternoon stroll when we found our narrow path blocked by a 2m monitor lizard with a prehistoric skin condition and the swagger of an alligator. It was a stand-off.

The reptile flashed its forked tongue and Daniela pawed my arm.

"Merda!" she screamed. "He eat us!"

"Relax," I reassured her. "He’s not going to eat us."

"But he lick his lips!"

"He’s not licking his lips, he’s smelling us. I’d only start to worry if he tucks a napkin in his collar."

The sun was setting and we were 9km along a 12km track, a one-way circuit which meant retracing our steps if we failed to pass. We couldn’t leave the path because the track hugged the edge of a cliff. The view was superb. The outlook less so.

I was genuinely stumped, which, incidentally, is how the crisis passed. The lizard slowly turned and trudged to a hollow trunk, which agreeably it climbed with its back to us as though affording us the privacy to pee, although I think Daniela already had.

I escaped first, then summoned Daniela to do the same.

"I can’t do it!" she protested.

The poor woman was close to tears.

"Yes you can. I’ve just done it so you can too."

She stomped her feet and scratched her neck. The monitor, err, monitored.

"Why can’t he go there?" she asked, indicating the void below.

"He’s prehistoric but he’s not stupid."

Daniela closed her eyes, which I deemed unwise given the cliff, and ran screaming into my arms.

Those wishing to break the ice with their new girlfriend should phone Binna Burra Mountain Lodge on 1300 246 622.

For many frightened foreigners, the question Where the Bloody Hell Are You? is easily answered. But my mother-in-law should be safe in the kitchen.

The only creature licking its lips in anticipation of her arrival is her son-in-law looking forward to some southern Italian fare.