'C'mon, mate. Are ya a bloke or a Sheila? Git it down ya' nick!'
With his hanging corks hat and khaki shorts, Mick encapsulated almost every Australian stereotype, needing just a can of Foster's in his hand to complete the effect. Mick, a wizened, red-coloured man in his sixties, was the owner of the Johnstone River Crocodile Farm. This was one of the stops offered by Oz Experience, the tour company facilitating my journey along Queensland's east coast, and as I looked down at the greasy crocodile kebab that was dripping down my hand, I was beginning to wonder if this was one Oz experience too far.
'It's not gonna bite ya, mate. It's dead!'
Mick knew all about being bitten by crocs. In his 20 years at the farm he had accrued an impressive collection of scars and maulings, yet his enthusiasm for sitting on and taunting the beasts was undimmed.
The Johnstone River Crocodile Farm lies a couple of hours south of Cairns and is ideally situated in the middle of croc country, the lush, marshy lands at the foot of the Atherton Tablelands. In this area it is not unknown for crocodiles to walk through the centre of towns like Innisfail during periods of drought, causing all kinds of traffic problems. The farm is home to more than 1,500 crocodiles of varying sizes, some captive-reared and some from the wild, as well as some that are shaped like handbags and boots. It is run as a profit organisation, selling skins and meat throughout Australia, although if the kebab I was holding in my hand was typical of the fare that they offered I would guess that most of their income comes from skins. Tentatively, I raised the yellowish meat to my mouth and took a small bite.
'About bloody time too!' Mick commented impatiently as the rest of the group gave me a patronising round of applause.
The meat had a strange, jelly-like quality, almost as if I was eating brain, but Mick pointed out that crocodile brain would scarcely be large enough to provide an hors d'oeuvre , and only the tail of the creature is consumed. The look on my face was enough to dissuade anybody else from sampling the delights of reptile cuisine and we moved on into the farm.
Upon entrance, each of us had been asked to reveal our nationality to a skinny, slightly malnutritioned-looking assistant called Tai, with selected nationalities receiving a stamp on their hand. I reckoned that from the look of him Tai didn't much care for crocodile meat either and had been forced to subsist on any roots and nuts that he found growing around the farm. Being English, my compatriots (Phil and Sarah) and I were slightly disappointed not to receive a stamp, but once it became clear what they signified it was a blessed relief.
Mick strode on ahead of the group, carrying a bucket of mutilated chicken carcasses to feed the crocs. First stop was a pair of freshwater crocodiles which are kept as pets at the farm. Freshwater crocodiles are of little use economically as they grow too slowly, and it is only the gigantic saltwater crocodiles that end up on skewers or Jimmy Nail's feet. The freshwater crocodiles weren't hungry, so after receiving a tongue-lashing from Mick for their unwillingness to co-operate we moved on to meet Gregory, at six metres long the largest specimen at the farm.
'Let's see if he's Gregory Peckish' Mick announced, striding into the enclosure as though it contained nothing more than a few fluffy rabbits.
Gregory lay snoozing in the corner of his pen, like an exhausted dinosaur, paying absolutely no attention to Mick as he filled us in on his colourful background.
Gregory had been brought to the farm after eating an incautious 18-year-old farm-hand when he had been just a sprightly adolescent at three metres long. Apparently he once had a pretty bad temper, but after almost doubling in size at the farm he had mellowed somewhat and now ate people only rarely. Mick walked straight over to Gregory, sat on the huge monster's back, straddling him like a scaly horse, and placed his hat on his head. Crocodiles are quite sensitive to sunburn, and with the sun beginning to emerge from behind the thick grey cloud that had covered most of Queensland since my arrival, Mick informed us that he was worried about Gregory getting sunstroke.
This was when the meaning of the stamps was revealed to us all. Those people that had received a stamp belonged to nationalities that had not yet had a recorded fatality to saltwater crocodiles in Australia. The lucky few included a couple of nervous Belgians, three bemused Dutchmen, a gaggle of drunken Irishmen and a solitary German. It was the German, a lanky, long-haired chap called Axel, who was singled out by Mick.
'Where's the bloody German?', he shouted from astride the crocodile, moving his head from side to side like an eagle hunting its prey. Axel, somewhat timidly, stepped forward from the group. He didn't know what he was being called forward for, but you could tell that he wished it was one of the Dutchmen in his place.
Mick failed to resist the opportunity to mention the war, citing this as an experiment to see whether Gregory had forgiven the Germans for all the Anzacs who lost their lives, and as he placed a blindfold over Axel's eyes we were still in the dark about exactly what the experiment was going to be. With the blindfold in place, Mick began to steer the terrified Axel, now shaking violently, backwards towards Gregory.
'Vot is happening? Vhere are you taking me?' Axel inquired, trying to sound calm, but with a distinctly nervous quiver in his voice. 'I'm gonna feed ya to Greg,' Mick replied bluntly, solving the puzzle.
Inexplicably, Axel made no attempt to resist, and when he was about 10 yards from Gregory, Tai, who had sneaked into the enclosure unnoticed, leapt out from behind a tree, smacked the victim's backside with a plastic rake and made a roaring noise like a hungry crocodile. Poor Axel nearly jumped out of his skin, while the rest of us fell about in hysterics.
'He wouldn't eat ya, anyway. You'd get stuck in his teeth!' Mick shouted after the trembling German, as he raced to rejoin the group to sympathetic applause.
Leaving Gregory behind, Mick tossed a chicken towards him and the great beast came momentarily to life as he lurched forward to catch the bird in mid-air with a great crash of his huge jaws, before resuming his semi-conscious, statuesque pose. Sarah's face went white.
We were shown around the rearing pens (swimming pools filled with hundreds of miniature crocodiles that looked quite cute but would apparently bite your fingers off), introduced to the breeding enclosure (where females guarded empty nests that they thought contained eggs but had actually been raided by the owners) and finally shown the cassowary display.
This cage contained a pair of colourful, ostrich-like birds with blue necks and helmeted heads and the idea was to begin a breeding programme to reintroduce this endangered species to the wild. The breeding programme had been running for three years, with a success rate at the time of writing of zero per cent, but they hadn't given up hope yet.
Apparently it is quite hard for cassowaries to concentrate on the job when they are surrounded by killer crocodiles.
The tour ended pretty much back where it had begun, under the tin-roofed visitors' centre with its talking, caged cockatoos. Mick hadn't given up trying to plug his crocodile kebabs, despite the limited interest that they had attracted first time around, and even gave Axel a complimentary kebab, only for him promptly to waste the opportunity for revenge on the reptiles by illicitly handing it on to somebody else. For anybody who hadn't had enough of scaly things, there was a chance to handle a deadly brown snake, which was supposedly very good-natured, quite fortunate considering that one bite would inject you with enough neurotoxins to wipe out a small town.
Phil, who had turned into quite the herpetologist over the past couple of hours, was photographed proudly with the snake coiled around his neck. I politely declined the offer of a similar picture. 'We'd best take a head count before you leave, just to make sure that you've got the same number that you came in with,' Mick announced with his screeching Aussie drawl, as we prepared to head on towards Cairns.
We were one short. Axel was already on the bus.
This year's winner
Paul Smith secured his first job in journalism last week, the day before he was declared the winner of The Observer Young Travel Writer of the Year award. He is to be a web-journalist on www.yougov.com, an internet site that has a youthful focus on news and politics. The 23-year-old Liverpudlian travelled to New Zealand and South America after graduating in Zoology from Liverpool University. He has just completed a masters degree at Southampton in osteo-archaeology.
Previous finalists include Toby Green, whose book Travels with Darwin has been shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Award,and Cath Uruquhart, travel editor of the Times . Judges were Observer travel editor Desmond Balmer; travel writer Martin Buckley, author of the acclaimed Grains of Sand, Radio 1 DJ Rajesh Mirchandani, Claire McKay of Air New Zealand and Kirsty Cumming of Austravel.
Runners-up tell of bastard melons, huge millipedes and deadly jellyfish
Heather Buttivant, 23, a fast-stream graduate working for Customs and Excise in Brussels, travelled from Alice Springs to Adelaide.
Salty, the dromedary, and I were the only takers for the afternoon trek. 'Afghan' camels, probably from Pakistan, were imported to help build the Ghan railway. Many were then released and large numbers still roam the desert. Others are farmed for meat, tourism and sport, the Camel Cup race being one of Alice Springs' biggest annual events.
I've always been slightly suspicious of camels, but my guide assured me that they were just 'misunderstood'. Sure enough, Salty was surprisingly comfortable and didn't spit once. From his back I could easily see over the stunted bushes to the Todd River, flowing beneath its sandy bed.
The area is normally sparsely vegetated and characterised by deep red sandy soil. Following recent rain it had turned a vivid green and was teeming with wildlife. The ground appeared to be strewn with ripe apples. These were 'bastard melons', a ground growing vine fruit, so called because they look great but are poisonous. Brightly coloured parrots, galahs and cockatoos flitted among the eucalyptus trees and big spiders lurked between the bushes. Fortunately I was spared any encounters with the deadly snakes that thrive in the region.
Jennifer Coyle, 24, a graduate trainee at Reuters, travelled from Darwin to Alice Springs
I enjoyed the company of Territorians; straight-talking survivors with a fierce appreciation of their harsh land. Towns are few and far between in the Territory and apart from the former gold-rush settlement at Pine Creek, the next place of any size south of Darwin is Katherine. Here the local Elvis tribute band were performing in the arcade, alongside two beaming teenage girls selling lip balm, with a special 'Buy one, get three free!' offer.
Our acerbic guide Tim was a Territory veteran - a former cattle ranger whose tales of life on the vast stations sounded immensely romantic to my city ears. An authority on bush survival, he lectured the pale European visitors sternly on the correct technique for shaking out our 'swags' - the portable sleeping mattresses that we zipped ourselves into after thoroughly evacuating any wildlife. Much to my horror, I had a near miss when an enormous millipede unexpectedly concealed itself in a corner. However, it was undoubtedly a price worth paying for the privilege of sleeping under the light of the Southern Cross and Milky Way at Katherine Gorge, or Nitmiluk as it is called by the Janwoyn tribe that own the land. Tim was mystified with our city dwellers' delight at discovering a night sky that wasn't orange.
Hannah Lewis,29, a freelance radio producer, travelled from Sydney to Brisbane
In the morning the rain had stopped. One of the group was keen on 'going to look at the hippies' in the neighbouring commune of Nimbin but I declined the offer to join him and decided to try sea-kayaking instead. After my trip around Sydney aquarium, I was apprehensive. The deadly box jellyfish had been on display, safely behind glass and in formaldehyde but accompanied by gruesome photographs of a victim covered in deep lacerations from its poisonous and lengthy tentacles. It might be the wrong time of year for the jellyfish but I had visions of the sea teeming with 'these stingers'. But at the mention of seeing dolphins, I decided I could live with disfiguring welts if need be.
As we were getting into our kayaks, fishermen were standing on the shore with a vast net. Every wave that rolled in was lined with thousands of mullet that all came in one size - large. A lone walker was eating chips, unaware that he was being followed by about 50 seagulls. It was a surreal morning.
On the open sea giant sea turtles came up for air alongside us and a group of 20 dolphins and their young were swimming close by. We paddled in to a quiet cove for breakfast and walked to the clifftop for a stunning view of the surrounding bays.
