Trivia

THe Big Croc is not in Darwin, Australia, it is near it. So a winner!

Funny pics.

Australia: Croc around the clock
Page 1 of 3View as a single page5:00AM Thursday June 07, 2007

Shandelle Battersby encounters scaly beasts in Australia's Northern Territory
If you'd told me a week earlier I would be sleeping inside a giant crocodile, drinking croc-tails and fully in the grip of croc-fever, there is no way I would have believed you.

Yet here I was in Jabiru, three hours' drive from Darwin in Australia's Northern Territory, in the Gagudju Crocodile Holiday Inn - an enormous green hotel in the shape of a croc, complete with eyes and scaly tail.

My room is up in the crocodile's shoulder and I'm so excited about staying here I can barely speak.

Australia seems to have a fondness for building big versions of things. In Bill Bryson's Down Under he writes excitedly of coming across the Big Lobster in Kingston, South Australia. There are more than 100 big things randomly dotted aroud Australia including a Big Oyster, a Big Pie, and the World's Largest Rolling Pin.

Anyway, back to the Crocodile Hotel. Croc-tails are on offer at the hotel bar and there is a huge taxidermied "snapping handbag" in the foyer. And I find, to my surprise, that I'm desperate to see one of these deadly beasts in the flesh.

The hotel is one of the attractions in this wild and desolate part of the Outback famed for its abundance of estuarine (saltwater) and freshwater crocs.

But although croc-spotting was a definite highlight of my four-day stay in the region, there is plenty of other wildlife to enjoy in this small part of the NT.

There aren't many places in the world where, as the sun goes down across a glorious pink and orange sky, you can watch a procession of wild animals pass by less than 50m away.

But from the deck of luxury wilderness lodge Bamurru Plains, a 20-minute flight from Darwin, a congregation of floodplain natives ambled in front of us in small groups, as if they were on their way to the Ark.

Even our hosts were amused at the line-up of water buffalo, wallabies, ducks, brumbies (wild horses) and about 15 pigs in varying shapes and sizes (the smallest, of course, at the rear) that passed before us, promising they hadn't witnessed such a sight in the few months they've been operating on this relatively small section of Swim Creek Station.

The African-style lodge, which has just made Conde Nast's 2007 Hot List, has been set up to make the most of its native environment while treating it with the utmost respect.

It offers a non-traditional five-star experience - you have to use a torch to get to your bungalow (dodging the obstinate and rather revolting cane toads), and candles and lanterns provide much of the light (most of the power is solar).

The Crocodile Hotel in the Kakadu National Park.
There is no cellphone reception, no television, and no internet, leaving you free to enjoy your surroundings with few distractions.