Katy Klein Has a Chat

It turns out that like horses and skinny dogs you probably shouldn’t bet on the outcome of  job interviews. You may recall that just before we set sail for Darwin I had racked up two interviews, one of which I thought had gone quite well and the second one I thought had gone remarkably crap.

So it has come as a pleasant surprise to be offered the position from my ‘crap’ interview.  I haven’t heard anything back from the ‘good’ interview so maybe I’m just a bad judge of interview success. In the mean time I had been contacted for a third interview but since they gave me only 24 hours notice and we were in the middle of Kakadu that was never going to happen.  Strangely they called me back a week later to see if I might still be interested in an interview which seems to indicate that the people they had interviewed were fairly dodgey. I’m fairly sure that you wouldn’t go to the effort of lining up an interview panel of four people again unless you had too.  I am also fairly sure that the number of interview panellists does not in any way correspond to making a better choice of candidate.  I was once asked to attend a final interview for a new manager as a courtesy and apparently I was the only person to see that anyone who turns up for an interview wearing a purple velvet jacket is not your winner. I was also the only person not on the panel (another panel of 4). Purple-Velvet-Jacket man turned out to be a terrible manager. It appeared that he may have read a guide to good management somewhere along the line but possibly hadn’t got around to finishing it. He was ‘made redundant’ a year later.

Anyway, it is fairly interesting that I can stuff up an interview but still appear to be the best candidate.  Which makes me wonder what the other candidates were like……..

So we’re back from Darwin having achieved life-long dream #2784 – Crocosaurus’s Cage of Death.  It was more like Cage of Photos in our case since the crocodiles weren’t that interested in working with us. Hence we now have a lot of underwater photos of us doing thumbs up action and riding each other like cowboys.

It was a pretty cool set-up though.  You climb into a plexi-glass tube which is large enough for two and you then moved along sort of like those claw games where you try to win the soft toy.  We were dropped into two of the pools and were wiggled around enticingly but well fed crocodiles really don’t want to know you even when you made appropriate crocodile attracting splashy sounds. What you may have needed was a poking stick to  liven them up a bit.  Being lowered into the pools though, gave you an idea of just how large the big boys are, they could swallow you whole and you wouldn’t even be a bulge in their stomachs.

The little crocs were a lot more keen on tourist action.  You can swim beside the tank of little crocs and they come on over in droves. If they could get through the glass I am fairly sure you’d stagger out with about 14 of the little blighters attached to you trying desperately to do mini-death rolls. On a side note there was more than one tasting platter on offer featuring crocodile spring rolls, can’t get more Australian than that!

Our final stop of the trip was to see the Jumping Crocodiles on the Adelaide River.  This was just amazing and I highly recommend NT Safaris.  We hadn’t even left the dock before ‘Godfrey’ popped up off the port side waiting for his treats.  Godfrey was huge and for a 100-year-old he still had quite a few teeth.  He wasn’t taking any prisoners, when he attacked the bait there was this ‘WHUMP” sound as his mouth closed with 3000kg of pressure.  A human has about 24kg of jaw pressure which is why we’d never win a biting contest against a croc. I was busy taking photos and at one stage Godfrey passed below me, seeing his golden eyes focused on you definitely makes you take a step back.  I’ve never felt more like takeaway.  We were on the only boat on the river which wasn’t double storey and when you see crocodiles that close you realise just how scary they are. I’m currently reading ‘Crocodile Attack in Australia’ (with a foreword by none other than Paul Hogan) and it makes for scary bedtime reading.

Now I like my animals to perform a bit but seeing the little crocs jump over a metre out of the water to get themselves a slice of buffalo was sensational. Then the birds decided to join in.  One recalcitrant croc wasn’t even taking a bite at the bait when it was laid on it’s nose which is when a brown kite swooped in for a quick feed.  The Whistling Kite also got in on the action and whistled continuously until our boat captain threw some meat up for him as well. No matter where the meat was thrown the kite grabbed it with a claw and then stuffed it into his mouth before the next bit was thrown.  I tell you if that kite ever figures out that alfresco cafe tables are a goldmine for treats, that’ll be the end to outdoor dining.

We completed our crocodile experience by channeling our ‘inner-Godfrey’ and taking on Sky City’s seafood buffet. Now if you are anything like me you take buffet as a serious challenge.  I was starving so we had got in early, along with the seniors, who tend to slow you down a bit in the queue.  Pausing too long between platefuls can be fatal as it gives your body time to register it is actually full. I thought I was doing pretty well when a guy sitting by the door laughed when he saw me go back for my fourth haul. And that was before dessert. My partner turned out to be a bit of a buffet-girl’s blouse and rolled around in pain from his bellyful afterwards but I was feeling good – as someone I knew once said, sometimes you just need to get a big plate of food!

Anyway, the NT turned out to be a fantastic holiday spot, even better than what I thought it would be.  The weather is awesome and the people relaxed and friendly.  Icy cold beers are advertised everywhere and the Barra Burgers are so good. But you do need to remember that the only things hungrier than the crocs in Kakadu are the mozzies – don’t forget the Aeroguard.