MENACE OF CROCODILES.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XLVIII, Issue 86, 13 April 1927, Page 1 (Supplement)

MENACE OF CROCODILES.

NORTH AUSTRALIAN HORDES A man in control of an area larger than Belgium is visiting Brisbane after a lapse of three and a-half years. He is Mr J. T. McCawley, manager of the Vanrook State cattle station, 90 miles north of Normanton, the combined properties of whicli comprise oveT 11,000 square miles. Mr McCawley told an interviewer that, with the decrease in the number of aborigines with the advance of civilisation, there had been a big increase in the hordes-of crocodiles in that portion of the State. Formerly, when the blacks were numerous and had to hunt for their food, instead of getting it at cattle and mission stations, they raided the haunts of the saurians and collected the eggs, which were the size of a goose egg. and of which there might be 70 in a nest, and used them as food. In this way the numbers were kept down, but nowadays, with the dying out of the aborigines, the nests had freedom from attack. and crocodiles had increased in an alarming manner. To-day lots of crocodiles were to bo found even in swamps and marshes, and cattle and horses were preyed on.