Who were Australia's original crocodile hunters?

Updated

They were the real-life Crocodile Dundees. The blue-blooded, rough as guts Aussies who took on monster reptiles and lived to tell the tale.

Crocodile hunting in the Top End was first pioneered by Indigenous Australians, but it's the beer-swilling, knife-wielding macho men of the Northern Territory whose presence has been etched into popular culture.

So just who were these daredevils that would come to typify outback Australia? And what happened to them?

Curious Darwin is our local story series where you ask us the questions, vote for your favourite, and we investigate. You can submit your questions on any topic at all, or vote on our next topic.

"I've never been to the NT, but being a keen hunter and experienced bushman, I loved Keith Willey's book Crocodile Hunt from the moment I rescued it from the library throw-out bin," says Curious Darwin questioner Anthony Story.

The book tells the tale of the old-school Top End crocodile hunters, documented in the swamp plains of the South Alligator River, bordering Arnhem Land.

Willey teamed up with Bill Dean, a professional crocodile shooter, and together, they explore what life was really like on the buffalo plains.

Mr Story's father Graeme met Willey, but both have since passed away. Now, he wants answers.

"That should give you a bit of a head start on finding someone from that generation who could fill you in from the horse's mouth," he said.

The first clue

The croc-hunting industry really rose to notoriety in the 1950s and 60s, around the time Willey's book was written and published, when scores of hunters made their way to the Top End in search of a quick buck.

Tracking down these old timers poses its challenges. Many safari hunting camps went bust when crocodile hunting was outlawed in the NT in 1971, after the animals were hunted almost to extinction, and most — if not all — of the old-school hunters have since passed away.

Our first insight into the lives of the these fearless fellows came from a call-out published in the West Arnhem Wire in 2015, an obscure online newsletter covering the Daly River region.

"Many years ago I lived with a man by the name of Bill Dean who had been an old buffalo and crocodile hunter and shooter out your region," the message read.

"I am aware of a lot of Bill's stories (ones that are not recorded in Willey's book) but there are lots more untold and I am trying to record what I can for mine and Bill's son, Joshua."

Intrigued, Curious Darwin set out to contact the author, known only as Sharron.

Soon enough, the phone rang.

Bill Dean: 'The real Crocodile Dundee'

A commanding voice came down the phone.

"Bloody Bill pestered me for years to write a book about him, to counter some of the stuff in [Keith] Willey's," said Sharron Capes from Bundaberg in Queensland.

"Willey wanted to go out and experience it [hunting], so everyone said if you want the real experience, wait for Bill Dean."

Sharron Capes met Bill 38 years ago when she was 15, and together they have a son, Joshua.

Sharron and Bill were two peas in a pod. Both self-described "walkabouts," it was not uncommon for the pair to spend years apart — and even remarry (more than once) — before showing up on each other's doorstep unannounced.

"He used to say, 'she'll always come back to me, this one'. And I did, even at his death bed," she said.

According to Sharron, Bill was never properly credited for his role in Willey's book.

But there was something that irked him far more over the years.

"He cracked it at Crocodile Dundee. He used to see the shorts for it and crack a mental," she laughed.

"He used to say, 'hey, that's me! That's me that the movie's about.'

"He didn't want any money, what he was wild about was that they'd stolen a part of his story and not given credit."

This argument has some merit. Photos of a young Bill Dean bear a striking resemblance to Paul Hogan's famed character.

Likewise, Bill's colleagues Donkey and Nugget — characterised in Mr Willey's 1966 book — pop up some 20 years later in Crocodile Dundee, this time renamed 'Donk' and Nugget.

"You remember that line, 'that's not a knife, this is a knife?' I heard Bill say that when I was 15," Ms Capes said.

"All the old fellas used to say it, because you'd get all the young bucks coming up wanting to make a fortune real quick.

"They'd come up with silly-looking knives and wreck the hides, so it was a common thing to say, 'you think that's a knife? That's not a knife, this is a knife.'"

After crocodile hunting was outlawed in the NT, Bill moved across the Top End and far north Queensland, working various jobs around Burdekin.

But he never stopped working on the novel he had pestered Sharron about so many years before.

"He had a name for it: Anna Puru, which is [Aboriginal] language for white buffalo," she said.

"We started, but we never finished. Even as he lay dying he said, 'we never finished that bloody book'.

"That's why I put the post up looking for people in the region, because I wanted to finish it for our son."

After battling emphysema, Bill passed away peacefully in 2014.

George Haritos: The man who helped a prince skin a croc

According to Willey, George Haritos was "a survivor from the time when men shot crocodiles with guns instead of cameras".

He worked as a carpenter after the war, but his real passion was hunting the formidable Top End beast.

His exploits as a croc hunter with his plumber brother Nicholas and business partner Jim Edwards regularly made news headlines.

One of their highlights was helping the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Phillip, shoot and skin a crocodile in the 1950s.

"One time [they] got shipwrecked, it was in 1951. The boat was leaking, they were 600 miles from home and they were heading to croc-infested waters," his daughter Helen Haritos said.

"Even though they'd been shipwrecked, they couldn't afford to go home empty-handed. They shot and skinned and killed crocs and returned home with a full load."

Haritos was unique among Top End hunters, Helen says, because he'd made a lifetime study of the coast, weather patterns and crocodile habits.

He was intuitive. He used a spotlight tied to his head to pick up the crocs' red eyes at night — an innovation he'd brought back from his war service.

But croc shooting was hard work. Sometimes they'd barely turn a profit, and in the late 1950s Haritos gave up shooting, blaming the three Ms — mud, misery and mosquitos.

And so began a vast and varied career, during which he worked as a pearler and barge-driver, among other jobs.

"He went to Timor with some cattle and was supposed to bring some sandalwood back," Helen recalls.

"At that time, there was a lot of unrest … They'd left, were about 12 hours away, and came across a man in the water and picked him up.

"He had escaped and they [Customs] told dad to turn around and take him back [to Timor], but dad tipped as much fuel overboard as he could and said, 'sorry, I've only got enough fuel to get to Darwin'.

"And that man still lives here [in Darwin] today."

Though he may have hung up his boots in the croc-hunting world, Haritos's legacy would live on in more ways than one.

A female saltwater crocodile, dubbed Albert, has called Helen's backyard home since 1992, when she inherited it from her father who passed away.

According to Helen, Albert joined the Haritos family unintentionally in 1958.

Someone had asked her father for a crocodile at a party. Naturally, George went straight to the Mary River to catch it.

But when it came time to hand the crocodile over, the buyer had sobered up and no longer wanted it.

"They were really pioneering days, and [people are interested in dad] because it's a fascination with days gone by," Helen said.

"They did have pretty exciting lives. Everybody knew them … And they were just nice men."

George Haritos was awarded an Order of Australia in the late 1980s for his contribution to the shipping industry, before passing away in 1992.

Rodney Ansell: A story of survival and notoriety

Though Rod Ansell didn't get a mention in Keith Willey's novel, when it comes to the old-school croc hunters it would be remiss to go past the real-life inspiration for Crocodile Dundee.

Though his fame would ultimately turn to notoriety, it was his unlikely story of outback survival that earned him the moniker.

After his boat capsized on the remote Victoria River, Ansell survived for more than seven weeks on a small island, sleeping in snake-infested trees to avoid hungry crocodiles circling below.

But according to his ex-wife Joanne Van Os, he was never a crocodile hunter in the professional sense.

"He shot a couple of crocodiles that were trying to eat his dogs out on the Fitzmaurice River, and he shot a couple out bush with some Aboriginal workers for food years later, but never shot them for skins," she said.

Nevertheless, after his ordeal Ansell was bombarded with calls from journalists and the public alike, all hoping to hear the tale from the horse's mouth.

"[Friends] were asking why we'd kept the movie such a secret," Joanne said.

"We didn't even know the movie existed till then."

So if he wasn't really a crocodile hunter, why is so often associated with Crocodile Dundee?

According to Joanne, Ansell was charismatic and "knew how to work the media".

"The original Crocodile Dundee movie … celebrated all those very Australian characteristics we recognise and love: resilience, affinity with the bush, sense of humour, larrikinism, that 'she'll be right' attitude," she said.

"Rod Ansell exhibited all those characteristics in himself, and played it out for the media when he had to."

But behind the cheeky facade was a dark underbelly.

Ansell's downward spiral into amphetamine addiction would end in a drug-fuelled rampage.

After killing Brevet Sergeant Glen Anthony Huitson and wounding three other men, he was shot dead by police in 1999.

Though they all have different stories and legacies, our question asker Anthony Story reckons Australia's tendency to "romanticise" the early-era hunters is a testament to the important role they played in curbing crocodile numbers — something he believes has fallen by the wayside in recent years as "latte-sipping inner-city lefties" move to oppose the practice.

He also concedes that while some of the old-school hunters may have more of a right to claim themselves as inspiration for Crocodile Dundee, without the expertise, knowledge, and guidance of Indigenous hunters and gatherers, "they would have cured very few skins indeed".

Who asked the question? Photo: Anthony Story wanted to know what happened to the old-school croc hunters. (Supplied: Anthony Story) Anthony Story hails from the Meander Valley in north-west Tasmania. A musician by trade and budding author, he is also a keen bushwalker and feral pest shooter. "[I'm] more at home in the bush with the friendly animals and trees than with silly humans messing in their own nests," he said. He hopes the stories of the old-school hunters will shine a light on growing saltwater crocodile numbers — and the need for action. "In the end, the balance needs to swing back," he said. "Maybe a reincarnation of those outlaws to cull a few more of these monsters before latte-sippers on holiday are subject to the death-roll and stashed under the river's bank."



Topics: crocodile, human-interest, animal-attacks, animals, community-and-society, history, nt, darwin-0800, katherine-0850

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