The elusive crocodile that is holidaying on the Ningaloo Reef on the West coast of Western Australia, was located today with the help of Gnaraloo staff.

A camper at 3 Mile Camp on Gnaraloo Station reported to Marnie Bartley the 3 Mile Camp manager that he saw a 7 foot shadow in the water at Gnaraloo Bay. It didn’t seem to have a fin and disappeared into deep water.

Marnie acted quickly, and contacted DEC to report the sighting. She immediately asked Gnaraloo’s mechanic Feral Turner to head down to Gnaraloo Bay to advise all the people in the water that the Gnaraloo Crocodile was in the vicinity. Feral asked them to leave the water and move away from the beach, so as not to scare the Crocodile until the DEC spotter plane arrived to track it.

There were about 40 people snorkeling, swimming and fishing around the bay and Feral and Rita, a German woofer backpacking around Australia quickly got them all to safety.

A kitesurfer Peter Rutherford who was sailing in the bay at the time, told Feral that he had been planning across the bay when a big black shadow had appeared in the water in front of him. He had to get some air to clear the object but by the time he landed whatever it was, was gone! He had been too high and was going too fast to be sure if it was the holidaying Gnaraloo Crocodile!.

Paul Richardson the owner of Gnaraloo said that the crocodile must of heard how good the fishing and surfing is down here………but unless it had made a booking it was unlikely to get a camp site as we were quite full over the Easter Holidays.