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CROCODILE
i. A Crocodile’s Daydream
The Top End is long dry/long wet - ‘the land of two summers,’
Crocodiles have seen them [both] through eyes unblinking,
they have seen the rains bringing
the spectacular lightning displays and threat of cyclones,
I have asked myself the question, why write at all? Crocodiles don't write. In between eating and breeding they daydream in mud.
[Why not just do that?]
They may dream the place because I think the whole place is a dream.
The mud is also a dream with only the mangroves to hold it together. That's the closest I can come to this so far. I think that by living like this, the crocodile slows down time.
Crocodiles are one of the hardest animals for me (a warm blooded mammal) to interpret. Even the Merten's Water Monitor is easier. They swim along the banks of the rivers all through Litchfield
and further,
propelling their green black bodies through the streams by their tails.
When I was there they fought over territory and food. They did human things. I was amazed at how they read my simple signs. I need to think more about crocodiles, but doubt if I'll ever know what they think about. Hence a some writing about assumptions:
ii. Entry Into Thoughts of Freshwater Crocodile Via Two Rivers
The rock face that hangs high in its own humidity has dislodged itself into a yellow eye, sliding into the water with a parallel splash, the great thorny cliff face snout, freshwater teeth as cut and crooked as a river’s edge, the warm brown river looks so inviting, the smooth murky water,
where we stand is solid land.
Our entry into rivers further south is at best always awkward, my white feet cut and bruised on surfacing rocks, the sticks on my ankles, the warm gooey feeling of muddy water entering the crevices between my toes, my dirty fingernails, things probably yabbies or shrimp that nibble the legs and buttocks and then depart within the flash of a cool current,
so far north,
you are almost in crocodile dreamtime;
the great food of your body has arrived, you are the submerged organism and the river remains simply to feed and surround and feed, and the uneven places beneath the water, apparently hungry, present suddenly, begging for stumbling and a clumsy lack of river knowledge.
Meanwhile I have other ideas,
I scramble and want no one to observe my entry, soon I will be safely in the rivers centre, born into this area which is Morphett Creek,
its riverline sky building walls of electricity, clapped on by thunder,
its uneven rapid cool and warm currents, its oily black gum leaves.
iii. Signs of Motherhood In Human and Crocodile
I looked into her far eyes for the signs of a mammal to draw out.
I found spider, swamp, cycad.
Within minutes it was ancient and she had departed,
without movement to that land.
Her nostrils like figs that draw and expel moisture her
yellow eye slashed by yellow water of the wet season in Kakadu.
iii. To Touch A Baby Water Buffalo
You saw a baby water buffalo, you thought
[ how close do I get without touching it? ]
without it minding to be touched. You came very close.
Its four hairy hoofs in the edge of the river, it stood face down as you approached it from behind, as if it were drinking there, cool
and wet and solitary in the shade.
Then you were so close you could touch it:
[ …I can’t believe I’m touching it… ]
then it fell down.
It had no head.
This is crocodile territory at the edge of the water.
Retreat and take nothing for granted. Baby water buffalo, my sister.
She is with [crocodile] now…
is a long way from the nest of your warm-blooded home,
the shape of your language.
Her feet and belly, she is families, and generations of cycads and geologies of granite away from your knowledge.
You almost need a telescope to probe her mystery.
Instead, we go for skin because it’s simpler, pretty.
We decorate ourselves with the agony of the infinite place, too frightened, too hopeless to explore.
And acknowledge her human qualities, her great mysterious equality.
iv. Egg Theft At Crocodylus in Darwin
She came at them again, and the broom came down with a crack to her snout, and then the steal bar, and then look out
she’s coming again/ up through the water, where the other young crocodiles only cringed in the sticky density.
It sounded like a broom whacking concrete.
The men’s legs crossed and uncrossed like sweating sticks. LOOK OUT she’s threatened, nasty.
She's just given birth, she’s young and very stressed out.
She has failed as a mother, and failed at her life as a crocodile.
All the captive crocodiles at the Crocodylus Farm Research Facility have failed to be what they were born to be. They are skin belts and wallets…
…and the glazed crocodile claw back scratchers with the nails painted red, have failed to be crocodiles too.
[What am I to do surrounded by all his crocodile failure and all those other animals who fail to remain alive by the millions? WHAT AM I TO DO in a world so full of animal failure? There is no place for me here].
If she had given birth in an estuary and then they beat her and stole her eggs, there is the stupidity. But the fact that she gave birth in a concrete pit surrounded by all the others in the farm,
is the great sobbing voice in my heart.
All the oval eggs soft on the concrete, crushed by her own claws still connected by the membrane.
She has as much hope as the cows, who try to hide their calves in the straw on dairy farms.
It was the pathetic site of this mother and her first birth...
When the men slammed shut the cage door, victorious again, she was the only croc out on the concrete.
Shocked and,
stressed, defiant, not a thing budged
that I could recognize in her ancient
reptilian face.
Her smile stayed as crocodile, her stare transfixed, only her breathing with hard leathery panting: her sides in and out slowed right down
until she only drew the breath of the rotten planet
into her body every so often.
There seemed nothing left here for any of us to bother breathing in. Yet sometimes the only thing left to do is breathe.
[Where will she go and where will her babies go?]
I can tell you that they are farmed like pigs and then shot in the backs of their heads. I can tell you that the tourists and the rich and the working class on holidays, have grown tired of crocodile products, jerky, claw back-scratcher and belts and now the latest purse made from stingray skin. It’s all the fashion, my gentle angel of the sea.
She was beaten [not defeated] with an iron bar, her snout jammed down on her bloody tongue, her teeth cracked down hard on the smooth concrete.
C’mon babe, that’s the way.
The manager and his assistant [well] out of the public eye.
She wanted their skinny bony hairy legs and last night’s beer in their guts. I wanted her to have that too, in exchange for her precious eggs.
My claw was reaching for the gate when the assistant’s broom was thrown down, awakening us all. I think she saw it too, [although I cannot be sure].
She with her reptilian eyes on her stolen eggs, as they were passed through in a red plastic crate lined with straw. Her smile that stayed the same like
a dinosaur a cat,
grinned like a billabong.
The long slow tide of her powerful tail, her bleeding face and nostril,
[it was her first birth]. The woman in me felt her ferocious mother instinct. I looked for a woman, she replied with a broom handle set into her expression. I’m sorry my sister, so sorry.
v. A Crocodile Appears At East Point in Darwin
A cloud the shape of a crocodile passed beneath the full moon at East Point. Never smile at a crocodile cause he might fall in love with you.
Rebecca pointed it out [she sees things like that] and places them in our minds, our landscapes.
I cannot forget, that whatever I am doing in Darwin
that down Macmillian’s road
across from the Berrimah police station
at the Crocodylus Facility, the beautiful pearly emerald skinned crocs
are living their life in concrete pits,
with computer implants growing as fast as the moon,
their tails thrashing stagnant ponds
and potted palms, sweeping whatever they can aside, like the tide drags driftwood and destroys it.
I call upon the blankness of my mind, the numbness of my emotions
to pull all thoughts of pained reptiles away from my thoughts.
[Never smile at a crocodile because you might never stop crying].
Even the giant captive cassowary, the dumb caged mouth harking water
placid, docile cassowary,
that dreaded darkness closes inside, as dark as the daintree
invaded by their planetary blue, red comb, wooden head, claw. We drink captive at the pool, as graceful as prayer. Please, I finally ask the giant spirit bird, who is the icon of zoo wasted life, don’t take me there.
Coral Hull is an Australian writer. The work represented most recently in Ascent is from her current work in the outback.
For more of her work and her mission take a look at her magazine, Thylazine.
Web Site
Email Coral Hull
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