Day 450 | Burke and Wills Camp 119: but I'm not intending their fate

73 km | zzOz total: 13,788 km

One of these informative signs in Karumba had info on a couple, Ron and Krystina, who rolled into town in 1952, and, broke, no job, built a boat and started shooting crocs.

Over a 12 year period they shot about 10,000 but one in particular made them famous, shot by Krystina, it’s Guinness Book of Records stuff, measuring 8.61 m or just under 30 feet long.

Hunh?

30 feet?

Well, apparently.

I saw a photo of them holding up the skin of a baby by comparison, only 20 feet.

An artist has sculpted a replica of this beast, named Krys, which bares its teeth in Landsborough Street, the main street of Normanton. To me it looks like something out of a bad horror movie, ridiculously bloated, on steroids. The artist somehow neglected gravity as a factor but you get the general idea.

When they stopped shooting they started farming from eggs collected in the field, worried that crocs would be wiped out and started lobbying the Queensland government to cease hunting. Eventually the Whitlam government protected them in the early 1970s.

So they went the full 180ยบ from ruthless hunters to full on conservationists, both later regretting their earlier killing spree.