A couple of weeks ago my wife left home very early to take our son to a rowing regatta on the Fitzroy River.
On this morning, our son’s school was responsible for making the bacon and egg burgers.
Just after the bacon was sizzling, during a frigid and foggy Rockhampton winter morning, the word spread that a crocodile had been spotted the day before.
The rowing regatta was off.
Young girls were in tears.
It takes a lot of effort to plan and pull off these events.
All that effort was for nought thanks to a risk that is ever present in the Fitzroy.
Crocodiles are part of living in North Queensland.
They have been here longer than us but they are a clear danger to us and we need to better manage the risks of man eating beasts being so close to 100,000 people.
The current approach makes it almost impossible to hold reliable events on our river.
The cancellation of this regatta is not an uncommon occurrence because the method of removing dangerous crocodiles from the Fitzroy is haphazard and bureaucratic.
For a crocodile to be removed from near Rockhampton it has to be over two metres.
It is not enough for someone just to sight or photograph such a crocodile.
The two metre or more crocodile must be sighted by a Queensland Government park ranger.
This means that there can be weeks between a sighting of a crocodile that shuts down events on the river and traps being laid to capture and remove the dangerous crocodile.
Even after the park ranger sights the crocodile a form has to be filled out and sent to Brisbane to get approval to lay the traps.
There is no local authority here that can act quickly to get events going again on the river.
The situation we face here in Rockhampton is not what they do in Cairns or Townsville. In these towns, the Queensland Government has established so-called Active Removal Zones.
These mean that all crocodiles, regardless of size, are removed and relocated upstream from the rivers and creeks that are near humans.
Such an approach avoids the stop-start removal process that we have here and makes it much more likely that rowing, water-skiing and dragon boat racing can continue.
The current approach is understandably leading to people giving up watersports in our region.
The Rockhampton Waterski Club has lost 43 per cent of its members, the Fitzroy Canoe Club and the Rockhampton Dragon Boat Club have lost around 15 per cent of their members.
The Queensland Government has begun a review of the Queensland Crocodile Management Plan.
Last week I made a submission to that review arguing that Rockhampton should be made an Active Removal Zone just like Cairns and Townsville.
John Lever runs the crocodile farm near Keppel Sands.
He speaks from a lifetime of loving to work with crocodiles when he says that “There are too many people using this area of the river with too many crocs in it, as an active removal zone any crocodile can be removed and that makes a healthy and safer area of the river for people to go about their recreational activities.”
The Rockhampton Council has also voted unanimously in favour of moving to an Active Removal Zone.
Next year the Australian Olympic rowing team plans to train in Rockhampton and we have the potential to attract many more training teams in the lead up to the Brisbane Olympics.
It would be a blow to our reputation if a crocodile caused these events to be scrapped at the last minute just as my son’s regatta was.
It is time for the Queensland Government to listen to us and establish a system where crocodiles are removed from areas of the river that our children and others use.
