Talk of the North: John Andersen reveals the real issue behind the Bob vs. Bob crocodile stouche

Suddenly crocodiles are the victims and the once safe waterways of the North are riddled with danger. Here’s what John Andersen thinks the real problem with salties is.

Eighty-six-year old Bob Irwin, Terri Irwin and Bob Katter, 80, going head-to-head on crocs. Who do you back?

The Irwins, respectively father and wife of the late Steve Irwin, reckon they understand crocs and that Bob Katter, according to Bob Irwin, is a dickhead. Bob Irwin might not have been captain of his school debating team, but we don’t knock him for calling another bloke a dickhead, after all Richard Cranium and its various offshoots including dick brain and shite-for-brains are among our favourite Aussie expressions.

Mr Irwin even called our Bob Katter an “idiot” in an oblique way. “We’ll always get idiots. It can’t be avoided, that’s just humans,’’ he said, referring to Bob K’s pro-cull stance when it comes to estuarine crocs. Forget trap and release because as far as Bob K is concerned it’s kill or be killed when it comes to crocs. As far as Bob K is concerned it’s only a hop, step and a jump away before crocs are coming into our houses at night and dragging us out of our beds.

Bob Irwin, former zookeeper founding the Queensland Reptile and Fauna Park (now Australia Zoo), Parliament House Brisbane – on Wednesday 11th June 2025 – Photo Steve Pohlner

But as much as we like Bob Irwin for keeping Australian idioms alive, I have to say that despite the entertainment value, his use of a unique and valued Aussie slur provides, we still have to call him and Terri out on their Brisbane-centric views on an animal that will sneak up and eat you right in your own recreational backyard.

Bob Katter, ever the parochial North Queenslander, hit back, calling out the Irwin family for keeping crocodiles in captivity. Bob wanted to know how someone who lives in Brisbane could know anything about crocs. “Oh that’s right they are all locked up in a cage in Brisbane, I’d forgotten about that.”

What this boiled down to was Bob K saying they were hypocritical for locking crocs up behind wire.

Bob’s son Robbie, the member for Traeger, leapt in to defend his old man. Robbie reckoned the Irwins were zookeepers. He said it as if zookeepers were bottom of the ladder, lower even than car salesmen and the well-mannered ladies and gents from the media. Worse, the Irwins come from the outskirts of Brisbane and they have the nerve to lecture northerners about crocodiles. Terri Irwin and her father-in-law might be able to fool the people down south but up here we know one thing and that is we don’t want crocs in places like The Strand, Forrest Beach, Mission Beach, Bingil Bay, Etty Bay, Ellis Beach, Cowley Beach, Kurrimine Beach, Palm Cove, Palm Island, Port Douglas, Alva Beach, Maggie Island and Bowen’s stunning swimming beaches. I’ve probably missed a few, but you know what I mean.

Big Croc – Aussie Barra Charters guide Andrew Mead spotted this huge crocodile in a Cleveland Bay creek this week. Photo: Supplied.

Our rivers and creeks from Rocky north were once great places to go to fish, paddle canoes and swim but now these pastimes are verboten thanks to crocs. Bob Katter knows we don’t want them at our popular beaches and freshwater swimming spots and he’s all for giving them a terminal knuckle sandwich. The Irwins are more on the side of saying crocs are misunderstood and that we should love thy enemy. Bob Irwin said he and his son Steve had worked out that you had to “get inside the head of crocodiles”. OK, that’s like saying “oh, he had a troubled childhood and only started killing people when his drug habit spiralled out of control”. Suddenly the crocs in our swimming holes are the victims.

Bob and Steve with a floating trap in Cape York. This is Bob's favourite photograph. Picture: supplied to news.com.au by Bob Irwin

Bob K no doubt would answer that by saying the only thing he wanted inside the head of a croc at one of any popular beaches was 12g of good old Mount Isa lead spat out of the barrel of a Winchester .308. Bob K could soften his stance and instead propose that crocs be trapped and removed from our swimming spots and taken somewhere like the Fly River in New Guinea … hmmm, not a bad idea.

They could go to a croc farm where they could perform stud duties or to a zoo where they could retire in luxury. Anywhere but near us. But Bob K is from Cloncurry. Out at the ‘Curry they shoot first and skip the part about asking questions later. It’s just wham, BLAM, thank you m’am. You’re dead.

Member for Kennedy Bob Katter at the Breakwater at Ross Creek near the Townsville Port. Picture: Evan Morgan

We don’t want crocs where we swim and where kids train as Nipper lifesavers. The swamp dogs can procreate to their heart’s content up in Cape York Peninsula and around the Gulf coast, but not in our backyards. If predictions about rising seawater temperatures prove correct they will inevitably move into southern areas of the state. The live-and-let-live tolerance levels of southerners struggling to understand why we want crocs cleared from our recreation spots will be tested when they start turning up in places like the Noosa River and Southport’s Broadwater. Then we will find out who the dickheads really are.

Here’s just three of the Facebook comments on the Bully’s story about the Katter-Irwin croc showdown.

Peter Guy: Just relocate the crocs from the Herbert River into the Brisbane River first.

Adam Lightfoot: The answer is simple, relocate most of the crocs to the Brisbane, Albert, Logan, Tweed, Maroochy and Noosa Rivers and see how long before the people down there crack up.

John Herrmann: The proliferation of the vicious salt water crocodile has changed our culture in the north. Water sports are almost non-existent these days. Minority groups and external parties have this world stuffed.

Just smashing

And now let’s move on to why women live longer than men. Blokes are always trying to come up with ways to knock each other out and generally do injury to themselves all in the name of fun.

So, say g’day to the new fun game “Run It Straight” where two guys run at each full pelt until they meet head-on. Thunk. The one who doesn’t get up is the loser. Pretty dumb, but there’s plenty of blokes out there who reckon it’s fun. It’s not that much different to the new craze of backyard boxing. Blokes are going at it bare knuckle in backyard fight clubs for prize money. And now mouthy Anthony Mundine is calling on the NSW government to legalise bare knuckle fights. It all sounds like a good ways to fill up more hospital beds.

I couldn’t help think of bullfights and goanna pulling competitions when I saw Reece Walsh slug his mate at home just to see how it felt. They were playing a game of I punch you and then you punch me. I have to say gentle readers that just like full-on frontal crash tackling, taking turns to receive a punch to the head is definitely out there in wing nut territory, but this is the sort of thing blokes do when there are no supervising females around to say: “Stop it. Just stop it”.

The only time I’ve seen bullfighting and goanna pulling was outside the Laura pub, the participants being stockmen from surrounding stations. Let me assure you right from the word go that as far as the adversaries were concerned there was alcohol involved, a lot of alcohol involved.

Bull fighting involved two participants lining up on the ground on all fours about 2m apart. They would bellow and pant and eye each other wildly while pawing at the dust with their hands, doing everything that wild bulls do when facing each other out in the bush. And then, heads down, they would charge on all fours at a great rate of knots until their skulls collided. The dull thud, bone on bone, meat on meat, drew wild cheering from the crowd.

I know, I can hear it now, some of you saying “play stupid games, win stupid prizes” and yes with the benefit of hindsight we can all say it was pretty stupid but out there under the mango trees it was exuberance unlimited. In all reality it was a bit like gladiatorial Rome without the spectacle of Christians being pitted against lions.

At Laura the wounded were dragged away to sleep it off in the shade. It all sort of faded out eventually. It was probably after one of the “bulls” suffered a head injury and had to be taken to Cairns by the Royal Flying Doctor Service for treatment. It was said he was never quite the same again.

Goanna pulling was not as dangerous to the noggin as bull fighting, but there could be physical repercussions, not the least being damage to the upper vertebrae which in worst case scenarios could lead to paralysis. The blokes fit and strong, who had been working non-stop for two or three months, living out of swags, eating spuds, onions and beef, riding rough horses and mustering wild cattle, weren’t about to hold a poetry recital. It was goanna pulling or bull fighting. Pick your game.

Bushies like to say that goanna pulling is a form of pilates designed to strengthen the neck muscles

Goanna pulling, compared with bullfighting, was somewhat refined. A belt would be looped around each participant’s neck, the idea being to drag your adversary over a line drawn in the dirt by an adjudicator who, usually, was drunker than the two “goannas” vying to pull each other over the line. It involved massive neck strain and enormous reserves of stamina.

Athletes are revered in Australia. Just look at rugby union’s John Eales, rugby league’s Johnathan Thurston and Artie Beetson, surfing’s Mick Fanning, rodeo’s Jimmy Maguire and tennis greats, John Newcombe and Ash Barty, but there was and never has been a greater accolade than to be known as the champion goanna puller or the champion bullfighter of Cape York Peninsula.

So, no, to anyone paying attention, it’s not a big surprise that women live to a ripe old age and blokes cark it early … usually at a speed approaching terminal velocity.

Two Irishmen are leaving home for the first time. Before they leave one of the dads pulls them aside and says “you watch them Aussie cab drivers. Always haggle with them because those sons of convicts would steal their granny’s pension money if they could”.

So the two arrive in Australia and catch a cab to a hostel. When they pull up the cabbie says “that’ll be $20, thank you.”

The first Irish bloke sitting in the front seat says “no way you Aussie bushranger. My father warned me about you highway robbers. I’m only giving you $15”.

And his mate in the back seat pipes up and says, “Yeah, and I’m only giving you $15 as well”.

Originally published as Talk of the North: John Andersen reveals the real issue behind the Bob vs. Bob crocodile stouche