Tag Archives: The Crocodile whisperer

Thai style fishing in Australia

Once our fearless Crocodile Whisperer had dealt with the rouge crocodile we all settled down for a morning of fishing Australian style but cooking and eating it with a Thai twist.

Ariya was the keenest and wasted no time dipping her line in the water.

My Sister in law, her daughter and my youngest (left) were a little less enthusiastic but as soon as they started biting they quickly changed their attitude!

Can you believe that all that water behind Ariya is the overflow from Lake Argyle, the 2nd biggest fresh water lake in Australia, and at that stage it hadn’t rained for over three months!

Once the fish started out-numbering the fishermen my Brother in law quickly lit a campfire and started cooking up a feast.

The younger girls were not all that interested in the fish but wasted no time devouring the dried beef (เนื้อย่าง) and sticky rice (ข้าวเหนียว) that we had prepared earlier that morning and cooked over the campfire.

After all his hard work earlier coupled with a huge feed the Crocodile Whisper also looked rather stuffed.

After eating about 1/3 of the fish and packing the other 2/3rd in the esky to take home we bid farewell to the Crocodile Whisperer and his entourage and made a slight detour on the way home via Lake Argyle to show off the massive lake to the inlaws.

Here are my two girls with their cousin and just a small part of the massive lake behind them.

After a little sight seeing we treated the kids to some yummy ice cream at the local shop before heading home and beginning the long process of gutting, cleaning and freezing an esky full of fish.

After devouring her ice cream Marisah decided to ham it up for the camera with her Daddies hat.

The Crocodile Whisperer

I mentioned a while ago that my sister in law (SIL), her husband (HH) and their six year old daughter (Cream) recently spent three months with us in Australia.

When some friends discovered how mad HH was about fishing they invited us all out one Saturday morning for a spot of fishing.

Fishing to Thais means something a lot different to Australians. An Australian getting ready to go fishing generally consists of waking up, grabbing the fishing gear from where ever it was dumped last time, loading up the esky with ice and beer and driving out to your favourite spot.

For Thais, like in life, fishing revolves around food. My inlaws were up at the crack of dawn cooking sticky rice, beef, chicken and who knows what other type of animal. I kept reminding them that they should have faith that we would catch fish to eat but they just laughed and said fish or no fish they still needed all the extra food. For three hours they worked flat out and by about 8am we were ready to go.

We headed up to the spill way which is a man made over flow built to handle the water from Lake Argyle when it runs a banker. The Lake is the 2nd largest (by volume) in Australia and the output from the spillway after a big wet season into the Ord River is phenomenal.

As soon as we arrived SIL spotted a crocodile sunning itself on the rocky bank. She was petrified as it was the first crocodile in the wild that she had seen. (I think they ate all the wild ones in her village a few generations ago.)

I managed to get her to pose with her daughter from about 50 metres away. You can just make it out in the background. It was just a small one (approx 2 metres) and is of the fresh water variety.

HH was a little braver and got to within about 15 metres of its sharp teeth.

As it was hogging our friends prime fishing spot they decided it was time to send in the Crocodile whisperer to have a chat and ask it to move along.

The crocodile whisperer approached very carefully and after a few minutes had got right up next to it.

He seemed to gaze intently into the reptiles eyes until bravely he picked it up ever so gently and brought his ear up close to what he told us later was to listen to what it wanted to say.

Apparently it had under estimated how cold it was out of the water that morning and had got a little stiff, seized up and was unable to get back into the water. The Crocodile whisperer (otherwise known as Rob) assured us afterwards that it pleaded with him to be returned to the water and that it promised never to bother us in our attempt to catch some fish.

So he did.