Review
While I don't have the literary skills of snowleopard, Pertinax or gentle lemur I will give you my impressions of Crocosaurus Cove following a visit there last week. As a zoo owner as well as an afficionado, my impressions may be a bit slanted to the business side of things - but, make of them what you will.
Firstly, the place cost squillions of dollars to build. It has a fantastic site right in Mitchell Street which is Darwin's "Eat Street". It is on a huge block of land with three road frontages so servicing the facility can be done from the rear. Everything is brand spanking new and no expense has been spared. The water pumping and treatment plant is so impressive that it has it's own viewing areas and descriptive signage! The two storey building has been purpose built for this attraction and that caused the first of my little niggles. If this attraction goes belly up there is absolutely nothing else that you could use the building for.
Will it go belly up? I hope not but to me it seems wildly over capitalised. And it will have a fairly limited source of customers. At $28 per adult entry the backpackers are not embracing it - and they are Darwin's volume tourists. It should appeal to the casino goers and those among us who's vocabulary is based on the words "wow" and "awesome"!
Because it has been built for the wow factor impact. It is spotless, it is airconditioned, it features stainless steel and mock rock everywhere and it's stock has been carefully chosen. Huge crocs, a white croc, a deep aquarium pool with huge Barramundi, hundreds of baby crocs and a very impressive snake and lizard collection.
It is well designed to elicit wows. There is a short tunnell where you can walk underneath a couple of crocs, including the white one. For an extra fee you can be lowered into one of the croc ponds in a safety cage. They even have a swimming pool where, again for an extra fee, you can go for a dip with a massive saurian. Well you don't actually dip WITH it. There is a 145mm triple layer polymer wall between you and the croc and another one on the outside of the pool but they won't show up in the photos!
There is an airconditioned crocodile interpretive room which is very nice but, I felt, a bit shallow in it's approach to the subject. The one at Crocodylus Park was not as flash but it covered the subject in much greater detail.
The reptile collection was amazing and city people would love it. Carpeted floors [a bit like the Kyabram Fauna Park reptile house but about three times bigger], airconditioned, very good graphics and a superb collection of reptiles including a couple of the now mandatory albinos. [Olive and carpet pythons]. My main niggle with it is that I just don't like to see big monitors in glass cabinets but that's a personal thing. MARK will probably be on the plane tomorrow because they had the most comprehensive collection of geckos that I've seen on display anywhere!
So you won't visit Crocosaurus Cove to commune with nature - but you can do that at Crocodylus Park or the Territory Wildlife Park. To date, those Parks report that the new attraction has not affected their visitation figures at all. And I believe them. Crocodylus Park was running four croc shows a day when we were there and averaging about 80 people at a time. Crocosaurus Cove ran one which attracted 40 people.
What happens if this venture does not succeed? Well don't write it off too soon. A major shareholder is Mick Burns who owns the Darwin Croc Farm. The croc farm is now closed as a tourist attraction but it's farming income will certainly underpin the Crocosaurus Cove business. Mick is a pretty robust businessman and I heard [not from him] that there are plans for a nightclub among the crocs to liven things up a bit should business be a bit slow. The mind boggles!
Some of the other people involved with it are no lightweights either. They include Dr Adam Britton and his wife as well as Dr Gavin Bedford.
I wouldn't recommend that you make a special trip to Darwin to see Crocosaurus Cove [your visit will take about one hour] but if you are going to Darwin for any other reason then don't miss it.
, I once worked with an ex croc shooter (from the 60s) who told me about some of the giants he had seen back then up in the NT, the biggest one he TAGGED was 25 feet
