Left: Brodie does his Crocodile Dundee
act with Bully the Water Buffalo.
Below left: Bully’s horns are impressive
from any angle!
Below: this Children’s Python was
wedged in a crack in the wall.
the croc farm. The country was mainly flat with
various types of grass cover including acres of two-
metre-high spear grass, low bushes and termite
mounds. Overhead swept the ubiquitous Whistling
Kites, surfing the thermals with a graceful lack of
effort. In some areas there were outcrops of grey
rock that resembled pagodas; a marked contrast
from the reddish, mesa-like formations sometimes
seen in the distance. We had a forty-minute stop for
lunch at Katherine and later in the afternoon finally
reached the roadhouse at Victoria River Downs.
As the bus pulled in I could see Nick talking to
another young guy. This turned out to be Brodie
Moloney, who although only 17, had worked with
Nick with crocs in north Queensland and was taking
a road trip before returning to a full-time job at
Hartley’s Crocodile Adventures near Cairns. Brodie
was staying for a few days and I soon learned that
he had an interest in all reptiles and had photo-
graphed some of the creatures he had seen on the
trip. Brodie went with me on my night-time excur-
sions and we got along well. It is great how a mutual
interest can bridge an age gap of some fifty years
between a young, active and enthusiastic teenager
and an older, slower but equally enthusiastic herper.
Nick had told me that the former owner of the farm,
Owen (‘Bluey’) Pugh had still to pick up a couple of
horses that he owned, and also his daughter’s pet
Water Buffalo, Bully. He had told me that Bully
sported huge horns, but it was one thing to hear it
and quite another to see it in the flesh. Whereas
most buffalo horns curve up, Bully carried a metre of
horn on each side of his head that curved out and
down, and it was a truly impressive sight indeed.
Some mornings Bully would be waiting at the farm
gate and his horns would entirely block the gate from
one side to the other.
Nick and Heather had two young backpackers at the
farm who had previously worked with crocs for them,
and had been hired until the first full-time staff
arrived. They too were keen to know about my
involvement with snakes. Nick and Heather pointed
out a small Children’s Python (Antaresia childreni)
firmly wedged in a gap between the concrete floor of
the veranda and the wall of the house. I found I
could not move the snake without risking injuring it,
so that night we turned out the lights and, sure
enough, an hour later it emerged. I caught the first
snake within a short time of arriving; a 1.4-metre
Greater Black Whipsnake (Demansia papuensis)
under a sheet of iron. They proved to very common