TOD Tour 2.0 Day 60 - Crocodylus Park

After a day off to fix one thing ... and the other two things that cropped up in fixing the first ... it back to sightseeing today and a visit to Crocodylus Park.

Brand new when we visited last in 1995, it was then primarily a research facility, hoping to provide market information to the the estuarine crocodile farming sector. That's not we found today.

Today, we walked into a zoo, pure and simple. In addition to the big pens which each hold and female and in the main, a huge male, there is now a boat experience where crocs are feed. This is mirrored in the feeding of the crocs in the pens, which are fed from above and encouraged to "jump" for their feed: in other words, to propel themselves vertically into the air. It looks good for tourists but its not the way crocs feed in the wild.

Surrounding these activities are a variety of animals from all corners of the planet, many of which just don't belong in this climate. All are housed in dramatically smaller environments than they would otherwise live and include an African Lion and a Bengal Tiger.

We lasted about an hour before giving up in distress. Had we realised it was a zoo, we wouldn't have gone. Neither of us care to support such treatment of animals.

Click for today's photos

This has caused us to rethink our final event of our time in Darwin, a visit to the Territory Wildlife Park. We still believe their method of providing realistic environments for native animals with an aim of rehabilitating them back to a suitable natural environment, is the right one. However, neither of us care to see any more animals in captivity.

As a result, tomorrow will be out last in Darwin and on Tuesday, we'll begin the trip home.