Crocodile Fishing With Beer And The Boys

Ever drive out a dark 4wheel drive track for about six miles until you hit a particularly scary portion of an Amazonian-like river with a bunch of semi-drunk boys on a Friday night, then take a huge chunk of beef and bait a tow hook with it, then take the tow hook that is attached to ten feet of chain and then another twenty feet of winch cable attached to the front of your Toyota Land Cruiser and toss it over a tree branch over-hanging the dark, scary and murky water, and then just hang out for nearly an hour drinking beer and swapping stories on the bank until something grabs the meat and everyone jumps and someone hits the winch button and you pull a ten foot Salt Water Crocodile two/thirds of the way out of the water before he lets go of the meat and swims off?

No?

Well you should try it sometime...

No, seriously. It is really alot of fun.

We had a new guy at work today. His name is Scott. I said "I am always Scott 1, no ifs ands or buts!"

"I mean, I was here first..."

And my friend Charles piped in about my old nickname "Dickhead", and I started to think of the boys I used to work with that called me that, and I started thinking about some of the stuff we did like fishing for crocs on a Friday night, and it got me telling our new guys about this most amusing of weekend past times...

All you need is alot of beer, a good stout work truck with a reliable winch, a hook and a huge chunk of meat.

Chairs are handy too. We always brought those white plastic stackable chairs and a few flashlights. (You wanted to scour the bank before you started.)

I had a job for awhile building houses for Aboriginals in a place called Arakun, in the far north eastern part of Australia. We had ten houses there, and three duplexes we were building in Weipa, a mining town a half hour flight north of there. Both would be considered a wee out of the way, if you were to consider their locations on the globe. We had a crew of about fifteen guys and there were two women, my boss's girlfriend Penny, and Hiroko, a strong shouldered Japanese girl that I dated and considered marrying, once upon a time.

Which left alot of testicles hanging out in the rarified Arakun air, looking for ways to amuse themselves on a Friday night.

Crocodile fishing was one of those ways. It was so amusing that I went with the boys to be amused. Hiroko was not amused. A crocodile at night was a scary thought not worth contemplating. Definately not amusing.

Do you have the picture in your mind yet? You are half drunk, everything you do is in the dusty dark. There are no cities for hundreds of miles, so the sky is as starry as the sky can be. You see the Southern Cross. Orion looks upside down. You see the Dippers but they look weird too. You do everything with one hand so you don't spill your beer. There are three vehicles, all holding coolers full of beer and empty cans, and one of them has been carefully nosed up to a tree with the front bumper leaning against the trunk. You take turns trying to toss a huge chunk of meat on a hook on a chain over a fork in a branch that sits out over the water. You try and try. Occasionally, someone tosses and gets carried into the water by their momentum, and you laugh and tell them to get the hell out because there are crocs in there. It is tropical and hot so noone minds the wetness. Finally, the Yank gets it in the crotch of the tree and everybody can sit down and enjoy the foam on the top of their agitated beers. Chairs are pulled out and the darkness becomes part of the ambience, as stories are swapped and beers are drank, and cans are crushed in carpenters hands and tossed into the back of a flatbed "Ute" and the night sky slowly revolves above you...

One of the boys tells of getting conked in the head in Morocco, and another of getting conked in the head by his exwife. One of the boys tells of wanting to find himself a nice girl who loved the outback and wanted to homestead with him somewhere, and another of the boys wanted us to all know that he brought a shoebox full of condoms up with him on his last flight, in case anyone wanted to try and get into one of the Aboriginal girls that ran around the mission...

Most of what was said was bravado laced with hops, and after awhile, we would forget the cable tossed over the tree and be completely at peace with the world and the starry sky and our diminishing beer supply, and then it WOULD HIT.

The truck would jolt into the tree. We'd all just about piss ourselves. Someone would grab the cable that held the button for the winch. They would push it. The cable would draw tight and then it would strain a bit and the motor's whine would change pitch a bit and the front of the truck would lift a bit and out of the water would come this horrifically amazing creature holding on to the meat with enormous ferocity and we would get to see five, six, seven feet of the beast before it would let go and swim away....

Woohoohoo!!

I'd highly recommend it to anyone.