Stop blaming the crocodiles: Victim’s father
CROCODILE MEETING
IF anyone is qualified to talk on the current crocodile management issue in the Douglas Shire, it's Steve Doble.
The Port Douglas real estate agent lost his five-year-old son, Jeremy, in a tragic crocodile attack in 2009 while he was living on the Daintree River.
Doble used the public meeting in Port Douglas yesterday to urge the community to start taking more responsibility for their own actions while living amongst the animals.
"Everyone wants to point the finger at the crocodiles and say that it’s their problem," he said.
“I would like everyone to respect the fact that we lost loved ones because of a mistake made by human beings."
He was also referring to New South Wales woman Cindy Waldron, who was taken by a 4.3m crocodile earlier this year while swimming at night in Thornton's Beach, near Cape Tribulaton.
??Doble, who has previously owned the Daintree Rainforest Rivertrain, said the only certain way to prevent a crocodile attack was to stay out of the water. It was a sentiment the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection (EHP) officers Michael Joyce and Lindsay Delzoppo largely agreed with yesterday.
“Stop always looking at the wildlife and saying it’s their fault. We are land based creatures, if we don’t go in their water it won’t happen," he said.
“Be wise in croc country, we’re not wise and that’s the problem. I’d rather we all start looking at ourselves and what we do. I don’t want to see people go out of business, I was in tourism up there (Daintree) and it was bloody hard…so I don’t want to see that, but we’ve got to have a look at what we’re doing.
“It’s a tough subject, it’s really tough, but we’ve got to all work together and not just point the finger at these guys (EHP)."
Doble, along with others at the meeting, suggested more be done to entice locals and tourists to swim in swimming pools and fresh water creeks.
“How many swimming pools are there in Port Douglas? How about we become the swimming pool mecca of the world, promote the area in a different way," he said.
“It’s not very nice swimming in the ocean at this time of the year anyway, it (water temperature) is 29 or 30 degrees so it’s hardly refreshing.
"I would like to know out of the 8000 (accommodation) beds when they are full in July, how many of those 8000 are swimming in our oceans? It would be a very, very small percentage. We go on about how are we going to fix the crocodile problem, yet all we have to do is influence that small minority of people in that manner.
“But we also have to accept that accidents will continue to happen."
Daintree resident David White, from Solar Whisper Wildlife Cruises, believed removing individual crocodiles would not make the beaches of the Douglas Shire safer, pointing to proper education of ‘what you can and can’t do’ in our region. ??He referred to a group of tourists from England last week swimming at the beach behind St Mary’s By The Sea in Port Douglas, despite the crocodile warning signs.
“I went over and said, ‘hey, there is crocodiles in here’, and they said ‘it’s alright, we’re only going for a quick swim and won’t be long. I said ‘it doesn’t take long,” White told of the encounter.
“We have to talk about ways to make it safer, and education is by far the best way. We have stingers here and it doesn’t stop people coming in the summer months and swimming in the stinger nets. Maybe we need to look at beefing up the stinger nets and making it crocodile proof. Make a place that has guaranteed safety, and leave it out all year round.”
White was also supportive of a public swimming lagoon being developed in Port Douglas.
