Following on from that story about the Americans shooting a gorilla as a precautionary measure in their attempts to deal with crass stupidity on the part of their citizens, at least the Aussies are more sanguine about such episodes.
Oh, I know they were looking down their noses at us over that bloody Boaty McBoatface debacle, but they’re still refreshingly down to earth otherwise. As this story today demonstrates quite clearly.
If the victim had survived in this case, then she would automatically have been in the finals for the 2016 Darwin Awards. Such was the level of stupidity on display.
It happened in the Daintree National park, in Northern Queensland. The presence of signs, local warnings about it being a known crocodile habitat, Queensland’s “be croc-wise” safety policy, and I would suspect a fair degree of understanding of the dangers of living in Australia in the first place, not to mention those associated with just being Australian at all did not deter this 47-year old woman from attempting to swim in waist-deep water. At night. It seems that the only thing she didn’t do was bring some extra crocodiles with her just to be sure. Unfortunately for her, though, one of the resident crocs was also taking a swim nearby, and saw its chance for a snack.
Unlike the Americans, who you can almost imagine tripping over themselves to get their guns in order to blow away a gorilla who had not actually made any threatening moves towards a four-year-old (some reports say he was actually three) child whose parents had been so monstrously neglectful as to allow him to climb through a fence and fall into a moat surrounding an enclosure, the Aussies are a little more logical over this incident. A local politician, Warren Enstch, said:
This is a tragedy but it was avoidable. There are warning signs everywhere up there.
You can only get there by ferry, and there are signs there saying watch out for the bloody crocodiles.
You can’t legislate against human stupidity. If you go in swimming at 10 o’clock at night, you’re going to get consumed.
Meanwhile, Australian police have been practising the art of understatement:
We would hold grave fears for the welfare of the woman.