Australian guide in court overGerman tourist’s crocodile death

 30 August 2004

SYDNEY – An Australian tour guide Monday admitted there were crocodiles in a Kakadu National Park creek where he took a 23-year-old German tourist swimming two years ago.

Isabel von Jordon was killed by a 4.6-metre crocodile during the midnight swim led by Glenn Robless in October 2002.

“In hindsight, it was a horrible error of judgment,” Robless told a coronial inquiry in Darwin, the Northern Territory capital.

He received a three-year suspended sentence in March last year after pleading guilty to making a dangerous omission that caused the death of von Jordon, who with her sister Valierie and other foreign tourists made up his Gondwana Adventure tour group.

The inquiry heard from Valerie von Jordon that she asked Robless three times whether the creek was safe for swimming.

“He said … he was sure it was safe but he wanted to check it anyway,” Australia’a AAP news agency AAP quoted von Jordon as saying in a videolink from Barcelona, Spain. She had wondered why he had used a torch to look for the “eyeshine” from any lurking crocodiles.

“He had been quite sensible, he seemed to know all about nature and the area. I thought he was quite a good guide before that,” von Jordon said.

Robless said he had taken groups to the creek before, but it was the first time he had taken anyone swimming there.

“I knew there was crocodiles there,” he said.

Robless said he didn’t need registration or a licence to become a tour guide in the Northern Territory and there was nothing to stop him from working as one again if he could get a tour company to take him on.

Parks Australia officer Garry Lindner, who eventually shot dead the 500-kilogram crocodile that took von Jordon, said some sections of the creek had as many as 30 crocodiles per kilometre. When he shot the killer croc it had eight other crocodiles with it.

He said there was a warning sign about the danger of crocodiles right next to where the attack occurred.

DPA

Subject: German news