Hey, my name's Hans.
I am a kitchen hand in the food and beverage department
at Australia Zoo.
My name is Hamish and I'm a reptile keeper at Australia Zoo.
Hi, I'm Bek.
I am a general assistant and photographer for the executive team at Australia Zoo.
This is my first time coming up on croc trip.
It's very different to what I could have imagined.
Waking up in your tent to
palm cockatoos straight above your camp.
Not to mention the amount of species that you just get to see up here.
And the sheer abundance of life up on the property is just kind of mind blowing.
I just did not expect to see so many different species
all just around camp.
We didn't even really have to go out looking for them.
They're just here amongst it,
as soon as you get here.
I feel actually very honoured to have been asked to come up here.
Well, I hadn't actually heard a lot about croc trip before coming up.
I heard that, you know, you’re camping and it really just sort of like blew
any expectations I had out of the water.
It's been absolutely amazing.
We had about two days of no crocs,
but on day three, we got our first croc.
So it was basically my first croc I'd seen in the wild before.
She was absolutely gorgeous.
So I was very honoured when Terri suggested
we name this beautiful new crocodile Bec.
My second day on the trip,
I got to accompany the croc team and help out with catching Maximus,
one of the big boss crocs we’ve got on the trip so far.
Working with the team up here has been a really incredible opportunity.
Some of these guys have been doing this for 10 to 20 years
and there's a huge amount of experience and knowledge within the team up here.
So working with captive crocodiles is incredibly interesting and a lot of fun.
But tell you what,
working with these wild ones has really,
really shown me a lot about how this animal works in the wild.
And as far as the team goes, I don't think I could ask
for a more supportive group of people to work with.
I was still back at camp cooking
and then I sort of... someone came back and told me that they named a croc,
Hans that’s about as long as I am tall.
So we're now tracking a baby croc named Hans, which is so cool.
I was so honoured when I found that out.
So my favourite place on the reserve,
I reckon is called Red Canyon.
It is absolutely stunning. In the morning,
it is so beautiful down there.
Most mornings have been, you know,
beautiful blue skies and then just the reflection.
It's just a mirror image.
It's just amazing.
It's very beautiful.
So one of our afternoons off,
we were lucky to go out to a site called Bluebottle.
And it's this incredible freshwater spring where the water just comes
straight up out of the ground.
And the abundance of life in that little spot is incredible.
Not to mention that the environment changes almost instantly.
You just go from dry forests straight into a freshwater oasis,
which is just teeming with fish and amphibians, reptiles,
even tropical plants
that you just wouldn't expect to see up here in sort of a dry eucalypt region.
One of my favourite places to go to so far has been Ling Creek Spring.
It's just an absolutely gorgeous space that looks like it's out of a movie.
My favourite animal
that I was able to see on Croc Trip so far has been the file snake.
They're just such amazing creatures and they have such an awesome texture to them
and seeing some of those in a local waterhole, which was really cool.
So my favourite non-croc animal
would be a palm cockatoo,
but unfortunately I haven't had the privilege of photographing one.
I have seen and heard them flying around Camp Coolibah and along the Wenlock.
But yeah, unfortunately I haven't been able to photograph one yet,
which I've still got a couple of days to go.
As much as I love seeing the crocs and the reptiles up here.
The birds have really, really surprised me.
Waking up with palm cockatoos right above your tent
and just hearing some of the calls that they make.
Without a doubt.
Palm Cockatoos are some of my new favourite species.
Yeah, I don't think anything can quite prepare you for what it's like up here.
It's just one of the most unique places that I've ever been in Australia.
A lot of different environments that we just don't have down at home.
And I don't think any of the stories that I've heard in the years that I've worked
at the zoo could quite have prepared me for just how incredible it is up here.