Disbelief as crocodile captured in Newcastle creek thousands of kilometres from natural habitat | Crocodiles
An Australian freshwater crocodile has been captured in an urban stream thousands of kilometers south of its normal range, following shocking sightings in a suburban park.
The crocodile was first spotted by a group of teenagers at Ironbark Creek in Newcastle, about 100km north of Sydney, around noon on Saturday.
Stephanie Kirsop, the mother of one of the teens, said when her son called her to tell her what he had seen, her first reaction was: “It’s a ruse…it looks like an alligator but it’s probably a log.”
“It took him about two hours to fully convince me to go there and look,” he said. “I go there, I look, and there’s this little alligator swimming in the water.”
The incident took place at Federal Park in Wallsend, close to a local pool and primary school.
Kirsop said he was in disbelief at first when wildlife rescue group Wires and the Australian Reptile Park were contacted.
He also contacted New South Wales police, who sent an officer to the park around 4.30pm on Saturday. “When the police officer saw that alligator swimming in the water, everything started moving a little faster,” Kirsop said.
A team of crocodile keepers led by Billy Collett of the Australian Reptile Park captured the freshwater crocodile on Sunday night, after several attempts on Saturday night and Sunday morning.
“We didn’t have a boat [on Saturday]well [State Emergency Service] We dropped us off a rescue boat,” Collett said. “We lowered our paddle, but it was slow enough to jump in without spooking him.”
Collett’s team returned on Sunday with a motorized tinnie and found the gator in the evening near wetlands about 3km downstream from where it was first seen. “I sent him sideways off the bow of the boat, sent him straight in, grabbed him, wrestled him in the water,” he said.
Collett said the biggest concern is the welfare of the animal. “We are approximately 2,500 km from the freshwater crocodile habitat.”
freshwater crocodile, Crocodylus johnstonitypically found in northern Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. “They are native to the creeks, river systems and lagoons of top Australia,” Collett said. He suggested the animal might have been a runaway pet.
The species does not occur naturally in NSW and the Australian Reptile Park said the species would not survive colder winter conditions.
The crocodile was transported to the reptile park on the NSW Central Coast and underwent a health assessment by a veterinary team on Monday.
The crocodile was just under a meter long and the team believed it was a sub-adult female. “As a girl, she can be up to 10 years old at this size,” Collett said. Large males of the species can reach up to 3 meters and females can reach up to 1.5 meters.
In a statement, NSW police said: “It is unknown how long the crocodile had been in the water or how it got there.”
Some Wallsend community members had reported sightings of more than one reptile, but a NSW police spokesman confirmed “it was only one crocodile” and that no other crocodile sightings had been reported since its capture.
