Last year I spent some time in Arnhem Land
and while birding on a very large billabong on Murwangi Station
which feeds the Glyde River that runs into the huge Arafura Swamp
which is just to the east of Ramingining, I was horrified to see that the cane
toads were in plague proportions.
The Arafura Swamp is about 80km
by 10km and would be the prime wetland in Arnhem Land.
During the eighties and
nineties I went to Cape York each year and one trip I arrived at an
isolated fishing camp by a billabong and was told by the group there they
had just shot a 3m saltwater crocodile because they thought it had taken
their missing dog.
They went on to tell
me that it had not taken the dog, but did have eleven cane toads in its
stomach.
John McLennan
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