theguitardoctor

Ok call me cynical, suspicious even, but I have to ask a few questions with regards to this event....

1. Ok, you go off quadding and stop near a salt water river to wash the dirt off the bikes...

Why would you wash a metal quad (where there's lots of alloy also) with salty water...every biker knows this stuff gets into the crevices and corrodes the bike like hell. Why not wait until they got home to wash the bikes...after all, they had a trailer.

2. It's fairly well known that Darwin has crocs..and if you go to the saltwater river, there's gonna be crocs around...

Why would you do this...especially if the salty water is undrinkable and bad for washing anything in....what would be the reason for going down to the river?

3. The croc grabbed him and the 2 friends ran off...surely this is not a normal reaction...you'd grab for a friends leg or something surely...or maybe thats just my reaction.....

4. They hid up a tree afterwards...surely if they turned to run from the croc (who was supposedly occupied dragging their friend into the river), you could run to a truck quicker than running to a tree and then climbing it.........

This is just my opinion, but something doesn't add up to me...maybe the answers to their course of action will become clear in the next few days....

Rich

scutterUK

erm... i think i missed something somewhere. But i'm with you about the salt business! nasty stuff!

sorry GD, what are you referring to?

scutterUK

ahhh.. just saw the darwin thread. sorry i get there in the end. I've not been paying much attention lately.

josiejo1974

I think he's referring to the 2 chaps who hid in a tree in Darwin whilst their mate got gobbled up by a 13ft Crocodile!!

The Koalas

Was this a story in the local papers or something??

josiejo1974

It's been on the BBC today.

mary1

I think the river was freshwater as the men were quite far inland but the crocodile was a saltwater crocodile ( you normally find them near estuaries hence their name but they can swim up rivers and live around inland freshwater areas.

You can get freshwater crocodiles (Johnstone's crocodiles)inland which are smaller and don't tend to eat humans.

I think they said on the news they were in Litchfield Park unless I heard it wrong.I had a nice swim there a few years ago!They assured me there were no crocodiles then!

Simone

I think you read a different story to the one I just read. This one tells it a bit differently:

A crocodile has mauled a man to death in Australia's remote Northern Territory - in front of two friends who scrambled up a tree.
The teenagers went to their friend's aid, but the crocodile turned on them - still with the man's body in its jaws.
The two 19-year-olds were forced up a tree, where they waited 22 hours to be rescued by helicopter.
There is no sign of 22-year-old Brett Mann, nor of the four-metre-long (13-foot) saltwater crocodile.
The authorities in the Northern Territory say heavy rains caused by Cyclone Debbie have allowed such fierce predators to move further inland.
The two teenage survivors, Ashely McGough and Shaun Blowers, told on Tuesday of their agonising wait for help after their friend was dragged away to his death.
The three friends had been riding quad bikes and had stopped by a river.
Mann was swept out by a strong current and, as the other two went to his rescue, one of them spotted the crocodile.
"I went past the croc," said Shaun Blowers. "I didn't see it. Ashley screamed out `croc, croc'... we just swam to the nearest tree and straight up we went.
"We were looking around for Brett (but) didn't hear a thing, didn't hear a scream, no splashing or anything.
"Two minutes later, the croc brought Brett to the surface and pretty much showed him off to us and off he swam.
"Five minutes later, he was back stalking the tree around us. He just hung around us all night and pretty much all the next morning," he said.
With the crocodile still lurking beneath the tree, the two men were finally winched to safety by helicopter.
Police said they had been fortunate to survive.
The BBC's Phil Mercer says the night was so dark that the two were unable to see each other, or to tell how far the water was rising beneath them.
Saltwater crocodiles are the world's largest reptiles and are aggressive and dangerous.
About 100,000 live in tropical northern Australia.
They are believed to have killed more than a dozen people in the past 20 years.

Florida_03

Envelope please...and the winner is...

sjn2003

Exactly what I was thinking - I think the croc was obviously in front of them in the queue when they were handing brain cells out.

Cheers for the link to one of my favourite website

Houdini

In a nutshell:
three blokes stop off at a river to wash their quads;
one goes into the river gets swept away by the current;
croc grabs him (which apparently is unusual to see a saltwater croc that far inland);
mates jump into water to help;
decide to swim to a nearby tree when the croc turns on them;
22 hours later they get rescued by helicopter.

tinaj

lucky that Crocs can't climb trees!!

Did anyone see that programme on Ch5 last night - anatomy of a shark attack? - arhhhh! That video footage of the girl that got her leg bitten off by a Great White!!! I will never go in the sea now!

theguitardoctor

Thanks for clearing that up - the info is more sketchy here in NZ..we didnt get half or that on the news......still don't know why they'd wash a quad there when they could have just trailered them back and done it at home.....but I suppose if crocs are rare that far up you wouldn't anticipate a danger.....