National Park After Dark - People Are Food, Too: Kakadu National Park

Episode Date: July 28, 2025

Val Plumwood was an Australian philosopher, environmental activist and crocodile attack survivor. During a 1985 trip to Kakadu National park, Val was attacked repeatedly by a crocodile but miraculously survived. The experience completely reshaped her life and her perspective of her role within it.For a full list of our sources, visit npadpodcast.com/episodesFor the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials at:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Thank you to the week’s partners!Smalls: For a limited time only, get 60% off your first order PLUS free shipping when you head to Smalls.com/npad.Pagagen: For 15% off your order and a special gift, head to Pacagen.com/NPAD and use code NPAD.BetterHelp: National Park After Dark is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get 10% off.Hello Fresh: Use our link to get up to 10 FREE meals and a free item for life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Close your eyes. Focus. Listen to work getting done with Monday.com. Relax. As AI does the manual work, while your teams are aligned on a single source of truth. Feel the sensation of an AI work platform. So flexible and intuitive, it feels like it was built just for you. Notice you're limitless. Limitless.

Now open your eyes. Go to Monday.com. Start for free and finally. Breathe. Girl, winter is so last season. And now Springs got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders. That perfect hang on the patio sundress. Those sandals you can wear all day and all night.

And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear up on that envelope? It's time for a little in-person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. From time to time, when we are immersed in nature, we feel how small we are in contrast with the grandeur of nature. High up on a mountain ridge as the vast sky wraps around us or walking out into a wide open field. We feel like a speck of dust.

It's a peaceful thought at first, realizing that we are not separate from nature, but part of it. One tiny piece of a much larger puzzle. But it's also a jarring reality. because to realize that we are a part of nature also means to realize that we are not immune or saved from it. We are part of the wild and vicious natural world. And the lines that divide us from it were drawn with our own human hands to make us feel safe. Out in the expansive forest, in the open ocean, or atop the mountains, we sometimes have the hair-raising realization that humans are not only predators, but also prey.

And out in the wild, our intellect, our humanity, and our superiority complex won't save us. We are food, and the world around us is hungry. Welcome to National Park After Dark. We truly are just hunks of flesh. We have no defense mechanisms. We, it's a miracle we've survived this long. It's our brains because we don't have sharp teeth. We don't have claws.

our skin is fragile. We don't even have like scales or there's just nothing. I mean, we are, without our brains, we are bottom of the food chain. Oh yeah, welcome to National Park After Dark. I'm Danielle. I'm Cassie. And we are both part of the bottom of the food chain. And we are both just me. And so are you. And today's story is animal themed. Of course, if you couldn't tell, if this is your first episode, welcome, welcome. This is my favorite type of episode. so to tell, and I'm ready to get into it. We're going to the, what is it called? Great down under. Australia? Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. We haven't been to Australia in a minute. Robert Irwin, if you're hearing this, please message me. You can find me at Dela Rock underscore on Instagram.

And I love your work. Please. Please message me. Yes. So, yeah, we are going to Australia. for this episode. And I think you're going to really like this one because it's a cool intersection between both of our great interests. I think wildlife on my side and then a badass woman on your side. And this is like the middle of the Venn diagram here at this overlap. So buckle up. I'm ready. I'm secured. Val Plumwood was an Australian activist, an eco-feminist philosopher, a writer, a boundary pusher. And according to her, I suppose I've always been the sort of person who just goes too far. I certainly went much too far that torrential wet season day in February

1985 when I paddled my little red canoe to the point where the East alligator river surges out of the stone country of the Armin Land Plateau. And I just want to say right here, I have, throughout this episode, we are going to be doing a lot of direct quotes from her because she was a writer. She talked a lot about her experience and she published a lot of works that She just writes so eloquently. I definitely toned it down because I could have like just word for word she could have told the entire thing herself. But there are a significant amount of quotes in here from her. And hopefully it's enough to push you to want to get one of her books because they're amazing. Cool. I love first hand accounts. Okay. Great. So I'm glad they're sprinkled in.

You may think at the end it's like, okay, it really wasn't that much, but it's more so than usual, I should say. But that one in particular was an excerpt of her writing from the book. the eye of the crocodile. But before we get to the story of why she went out in that little red canoe and went a little too far and what happened to her out on that river, let's get to know her and why she wound up there that day in the first place. Val Plumwood had always cared deeply about the natural world. And she wasn't just admiring nature. She was looking at it through a lens of philosophy and logic. She earned a degree in philosophy from the University of Sydney, a degree in logic from the University of New England. What's a degree of logic?

I don't know, but it sounds really smart. I'm so, what is a degree in logic? And also University of New England, like, that's our home turf. Yeah, I just need to know. Like, now you have a degree in making logical decisions. Okay, you're ready for this? Ready. The University of New England offers a degree in logic and computation as part of its Bachelor of Science program.

This program emphasizes critical thinking, communication, and holistic learning while also incorporating elements of logic, reasoning, and quantitative skills according to the University of New England. And it goes on to say it's all about the degree focuses on data analysis, problem solving, applications of logic, etc, etc. So it's literally a degree how to survive in the real world using logic. I guess. I mean, you got to learn life skills somewhere. might as well do it at college. That's just, it's just so interesting. Okay.

That's the funniest degree I've ever heard in my entire life. Well, it's just part of it. A degree in common sense. Oh, she has. So she has the philosophy degree from Sydney, the logic degree from University of New England, and then later she went on to get her PhD in philosophy from the Australian National University. So she really is a thinker.

She's a thinker. Yeah. It feels very similar. It's like very adjacent to psychology. and it sounds like she was very interested in the field of how the mind works. Yes, absolutely. As a fellow degree holder in an adjacent field, you should understand that. As a fellow thinker, I also have a degree in logic.

Okay. I feel like we should tell people that in today's recording. I just, I feel like we should be honest. This episode is going to be unhinged. Welcome. Welcome. This is a serious thing, and like clearly we're not going to be laughing through the whole thing. But just so you know, this is our fourth recording of the day. Which is the most we've ever done in a single day.

Lives. We've done it to ourselves. And it's fine. It's not your fault. But just know that we're on our last brain cell. And we're trying our best. And lucky for you. Our last brain cell is really funny.

Yes, it is. Okay. Okay. So back to Val, her logical mind. She was a very deeply curious person and spent her life asking different radical questions. In 1974, Val and her then-husband Richard moved to Plumwood Mountain, which is a 300-acre property in the southeastern New South Wales, Australia area. Situated between Manga and Botawang National Parks, the area, the area. is a rainforest that's just covered with its namesake plumwood trees. They built an off-grid

house with local timber and stone, and together they wrote the book The Fight for the Forests, which was notable because not only did they make a compelling critique of the forest industry, but Val and Richard also brought a philosophy lens to the topic of environmental conservation and made the argument that the debates around forestry at the core were not really about facts, but instead about values. As Freya Matthews, Kate Rigby and Deborah Rose explained in the introduction of the book, The Eye of the Crocodile, which was actually published posthumously after Val's death, Val and Richard recognized that the environmental problems that were coming into view at that time were the result not merely of faulty policies and technologies, but of the

underlying attitudes to the natural world that were built into the very foundation of Western thought. Val and Richard eventually got divorced in 1981, but Val continued to live on their property on Plumwood Mountain and took the name, Plumwood, to be her new last name because she just loved it so much. I like that. Val was pushing boundaries in the environmental world. She believed that in order to have productive conversations about nature, we first need to talk about our own relationship with nature and understand how that relationship was fueling many of our environmental crises. At the core of the problem, Val argued, was the underlying belief that humans are separate from the rest of nature. How we see ourselves as separate or special makes it easier to justify exploiting and controlling other animals and various forms of life. Val describes this concept with the term human nature dualism and explains how Western thought perceives humans as different from nature primarily because of our minds.

So kind of going back to what you said at the very beginning of this, like we got to. so far because of our minds, but that separation and kind of removing ourselves from the rest of the web of life is a problem. And she went on to say that because of that view, it creates a separation between minds and bodies, categories that she refers to as reason and nature. Intellects becomes associated with the mind and body becomes associated with nature. And this matters because it creates a hierarchy that places reason at the top and justifies the exploitation of anything that is associated with nature. Anything that has to do with emotions, intuition, or connecting with your body is seen as nature, and therefore is labeled as inferior. And this framework of thought,

this reasoning has historically been used to demean and exploit women, indigenous people, and racial minorities. So in this way, Val explained the struggles for racial justice, gender equality, and environmental justice are all interwoven and deeply interconnected. And here again is a quote from her. She wrote, I see human in nature dualism as a failing of my culture, time and history. Human nature dualism conceives the human as not only superior to, but as different in kind from the non-human, which as a lower sphere exists as a mere resource for the higher human one. This ideology has been functional for Western culture in enabling it to exploit nature with less constraint, but also creates dangerous illusions by denying embeddedness in and dependency on

nature. This can be seen in our denial of human inclusion in the food web and in our response to the ecological crisis. So this is a really important point. We are a part of nature. And trying to create a framework of thought that separates us from that creates a very harmful, almost illusion that humans are in control of the natural world because we're like, well, we're other. Like, we're separate from that. So we can dominate it, control it, exploit it. You know, like, we're separate and you're just kind of drawing this invisible boundary and removing yourself from our natural place in the world. And she found that to be really dangerous in a lot of different ways. Yeah, I think it's a very valid point. And when you just look at our daily lives,

even people who are not necessarily trying to exploit nature, a lot of it comes down to modern convenience. Toilet paper, for example. I mean, you don't feel like you're exploiting the natural world when you use your toilet paper. But the reality is that if you're not using an eco-conscious one, somewhere is getting, trees are getting chopped down for you to be able to use it. So, I mean, and there's just like, that's a tiny example. But same thing, you use your car. You use fossil fuels to get to work. And there's just like there's little ways, I think, where we all use nature to our convenience. And sometimes it's hard to even recognize it. Like me sitting in my house right now, I'm completely surrounded by wood.

And then it all comes from chopped down trees. So even if you're not actively destroying a rainforest or decimating animal populations, we all use nature in some way or another. and it all kind of everything comes back to that at some point. Well, and also, you know, going off of that, she argued that because we view ourselves as separate and more important than nature, that we use that as kind of justification, like a justification to do sometimes very harmful things to either other creatures, other groups of people or the environment.

And she was kind of arguing that like the root of all of these different. different problems, albeit sometimes vastly different, all have this common denominator of that we see ourselves as superior and separate from the natural world around us when in reality we're not. So that was kind of her biggest thing. And that's what she wrote about and contemplated and really made her life's work. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session.

And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book-to-screen favorites you've already read twice. Off-campus, L, every year after, The Love Hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. So for Val, talking about protecting nature had to start with the basic acknowledgement that we our nature, period. Not just from this whimsical, everything is connected standpoint, but from a

perspective that underlines that we humans are not special, we're not spared, and that we are not in control. VAL was a leader in the world of environmental philosophy and brought vital and radical questions about humanity and nature to the forefront of academic and mainstream dialogue. But what she didn't know was that she was about to truly live out the conflicts and questions she had spent her entire life studying. In 1985, Val went on a trip to Cacadoo National Park, partly for pleasure, but also for work. She was working on research related to the continuation of the park's preservation and also volunteered to help examine proposed walking trails. Towards the end of her trip, she camped at the East Alligator Ranger Station, and one of the Rangers there, Greg Miles,

had been creating a new walking pack in the park and enlisted Val's help. He knew that she, She was extensively experienced in the outdoors. She loved solo bushwalks in the Australian landscape. She had done it for many years. This was kind of her bread and butter. She was not unfamiliar to this. So he asked her if she'd be willing to test out the trail that he was hoping to plan out and basically just like let him know what she thought of it.

She agreed, always eager for an excuse to explore and be outside, especially in a place as beautiful as Kakadu. This national park was established in 1979, and Val was actually one of the environmental activists who helped fight for the land to be protected as a national park at its inception. It sits at the northern tip of Australia and covers a vast 7,700 square miles, almost half the size of Switzerland, and it's the country's largest national park. Kakadu sits on indigenous land. Aboriginal communities have called the park home for more than 65,000 years, and since the

late 1970s, the Aboriginal community has leased the land to the National Park Service in Australia, and the two groups co-manage the park with a variety of conservation techniques that combine both traditional Aboriginal land stewardship practices with modern science. The park includes a variety of different landscapes and rich ecosystems, from the wetlands on the coast where birds and sea snakes slither and swoop in the mangroves to the hills in the southern part of the park, where massive red rock ridges jut out of the ground formed by volcanic activity 250 million years ago. 80% of the park is covered by Savannah Woodlands and Lowlands.

Biodiversity flourishes here with over 2,000 distinct plant species. And of course, with such rich and varied ecosystems, tons of animals call this park home to. We've got wallabies, snakes, turtles, dozens of bird species, a lot of iconic Australian wildlife. But one of the most notable things that Kakadu is known for is its crocodiles. Dun, done, done.

There are around 10,000 crocodiles in the park, nearly 10% of all crocs in the entire northern territory, both freshwater and salt water. While freshwater crocodiles mainly consume fish and other small animals like frogs, rats, and birds, saltwater crocks at their largest, can be up to almost 20 feet long and weigh over 2,000 pounds. They also eat mainly fish, but occasionally they set their eyes. on larger feasts. They are powerful predators and have been known to easily wolf down wallubes, dogs, horses, cows, and buffalo. Horses. Horses. Oh yeah. Moli. And of course, from time to time,

they have also killed and consumed humans. For Val to reach the trailhead and begin testing out this walking path for Ranger Miles, she first had to canoe across a tributary of the East Alligator River. Ranger Miles lent her a canoe and she paddled. off to find the start of this new trail. And it's really important to say here that while today this park is almost renowned for its crocs, like people venture here, even though it's pretty remote just for crocodile viewing opportunities, that wasn't always the case. The Aboriginal people of Australia have had a special place for the saltwater crocodile in their culture, and oral histories and legends tell stories of the first humans being born from a crocodile. Some populations believe the

souls of their ancestors reside in these animals and refuse to kill older vulnerable adults. But for others, the animals made good eating, and the animals were killed for their meat. However, that was done at a sustainable level, with no overall detrimental effect on the population for thousands of years. But that all changed when early European settlers laid eyes on the Australian waterways and used words such as teeming and infested to describe the number of crocodiles they saw within those waterways. Like infested with water. It's like you mean they live there.

Oh my God. That's something that drives me insane, especially, I mean, around here, we hear it with sharks. All the time. Shark infested water. How about human infested ocean? Thank you for the perspective shift. I appreciate that. Quickly, this focus was shifted from hunting crops for their meat to hunting them for their hides,

which proved to be far more valuable. Between 1945 and the late 1960s, crocodiles were hunted so intensively for their hides that populations throughout Northern Australia were pushed to dangerously low levels. Protection was finally granted in 1971 in the Northern Territory when fewer than 3,000 crocs were estimated to remain out of a former population of close to 100,000. Wow. I'm just, while you're describing this, I'm remembering a phase in my life where I had a son. slight crocodile obsession. And I remember, I remember I went to Florida. And at the time I was a kid, I didn't like really realize. But I got a crocodile skull that I brought home with me. And I got a crocodile shirt. And I got a crocodile necklace with a crocodile tooth. And I got crocodile

earrings. And I wore them and like displayed this crocodile head in my room for like years. How am I just learning this about you? That's a pretty significant face. It was a suppressed memory. And now I'm thinking about it. I'm like, wait a second. From like fourth to sixth grade, I wore a crocodile tooth around my neck. You were the crocodile girl. I was. Imagine people like if they hear your name. They're like, oh, yeah. She always wore like a crocodile necklace. It's like that's the only thing they remember about you. Crocodile girl. What happened? I don't know. She moved on. Yes. Well, welcome back. When Val pushed her canoe into the waterways of Kakadu in 1985, protections safeguarding the animals had been in effect for well over a decade.

And the crocs were responding incredibly well. Researchers were almost stunned by just how staggering a recovery they were making and were really impressed by their ability to adapt to changing population pressures. By the early 1980s, their population had rebounded to nearly 80,000. Very cool. they are like, oh, all we needed is for you to just like safeguard us for a couple years and we will be the comeback kids. So their population has rebounded pretty significantly. Normally, paddling the river would be a simple task, but it had started to rain heavily upriver and as Val pushed on, the river started to flood. All the rain made it harder to tell where she was and she was struggling to find the trailhead.

All the while, the rain increased in intensity, pounding down in fat droplets, soaking her and swelling the river. With increased water levels comes the potential for flooding of typical crocodile territory and causes them to move from their usual habitats to new unexpected areas. She continued on for a time until the rain drove her to take a bit of a break. She pulled the canoe over towards a rock outcrop rising out of the swamp for a quick bite to eat. While chewing on her waterlogged meal, she suddenly. felt the very unfamiliar sensation of being watched. While she paused to consider the feeling, it didn't deter her. She finished up her lunch and decided to push onwards to explore a clear, deep channel closer to the river she had traveled along the previous day. After spending a bit of

time out there, that uneasy feeling mixed with the heavy downpour of rain, made Val decide that ultimately it was time to call it a day and head back to the Ranger Station. She started paddling back down the river, but after just 10 minutes on her return trip, she rounded a corner and saw something strange floating on the surface of the water. She considered it for a moment, thinking it was a strange looking stick, and found it odd that she didn't remember seeing this floating object on her way up the river. As she pulled up closer, she realized this was not a stick, but rather, she saw two blinking eyes staring back at her. Realizing in that moment that she was looking upon a crocodile, initially, Val wasn't afraid. It was a.

actually quite the opposite in those first few moments as her initial reaction bordered on excitement and intrigue. She later wrote, The Eye of the Crocodile, the Giant Estrean Crocodile of Northern Australia, is golden-flecked, reptilian, beautiful. It has three eyelids. It appraises you coolly, it seems, as if seldom impressed, as one who knows your measure. But it can also light up with an unexpectedly intense glint if you manage to engage its interest. And unluckily for Val, in those moments, she managed to engage this crocodile's interest. She kept paddling, attempting to slowly make her way past this golden eye predator, but just as she pulled alongside it, the crocodile opened its jaws and lunged towards the canoe.

As Val later told the story in her influential article being prey, she says, Again it came again and again. Now from behind, shuddering my flimsy craft. I paddled furiously, but the blows continued. The unheard of was happening. The canoe was under attack, the crocodile in full pursuit. For the first time, it came to me fully that I was prey. So now there is no mistake.

Val is under attack. And if she wanted to survive, she had to act fast. She jumped out of her canoe and tried to escape into the branches of a nearby paperbark tree, which was growing on the bank of the river that she was right alongside of. Oh my God, when you first said she jumped out. I was like, into the water? On top. No.

She like kind of leapt because the crocodile is just attacking the canoe like incessantly. So she's like, okay, I'm just going to bail out to the side of the river. There's trees overhanging. I'm just going to grab and try and pull myself a wave. There's fast on land too. I know. Oh, my God. Which makes them so scary.

Remember, it's pouring rain also. Like this isn't ideal conditions by any stretch. So she jumps out of the canoe, tries to escape into the branches of. of this nearby paper bark tree, which was growing on the bank of the river, but just as she was trying to make her escape, she felt the crocodile's jaws sink into her skin. It grabbed her between the legs and pulled her down into the murky brown river. On top of her panic, in that moment, Val felt disbelief.

As she says, this was a strong sense at the moment of being grabbed by those powerful jaws, that there was something profoundly and incredibly wrong in what was happening, some sort of mistaken identity. My disbelief was not just existential, but ethical. This was not happening. This couldn't be happening. The world was not like that. The creature was breaking the rules, was totally mistaken,

utterly wrong to think I could be reduced to food. As a human being, I was so much more than food. It was a denial of, an insult to all that I was to reduce me to food. Were all the other facets of my being to be sacrificed to this utterly, undiscriminating use was my complex organization to be destroyed so I could be reassembled as part of this other being. With indignation as well as disbelief, I rejected this event. It was an illusion. It was not only unjust, but unreal. It couldn't be happening. That is the most well-written way I've ever heard someone say, do you even know who I am?

You must be mistaken. Do you know who I am? But isn't that so? And that's why I said, like, I want to include pieces of her writing directly because she just puts it so well. And of course, like, I want everyone to hear from her directly. But I think it's also really telling of like a lot of people who are in situations of being attacked, whether it's be a crocodile, a shark, a big cat, something like that and lose their lives. Like, I'm sure they probably have thought similar to this. I'm not part of the food chain. What are you doing? Yeah, but it's me, but I'm a human. I have thoughts. I have a family. I have a house. I have responsibilities. I have children. Like, you know, like, just I think it's just so well put. And it's just like, I know a lot of times we say people repeatedly say, you know, like, I can't believe this is happening to me, but this really kind of goes further to elaborate on that into a way that like I haven't never heard it put before. But I can totally understand. So of course, she's in denial. She can't believe this is happening. to her, but of course it was happening. And at that moment, she didn't have time to engage her

philosopher brain. That degree in logic, it just went out the window. What was even the point? Right. If you're not trained in your degree and logic to handle an alligator or crocodile attack, sorry, then why are you even there? I would demand my tuition money back. Yeah, University of New England. I will be writing to the dean. It was time for her survival brain to kick into high gear because the crocodile was dragging her underwater and spinning her around in what is widely known as a maneuver called the death roll. Here we are. The death roll is as bad as it sounds. Crocodiles use it to disorient, dismember, subdue and drown their prey in large spinning swoops. Endurance is not a crocodile strong suit, so instead they try to wipe their prey out quickly

with a force and viciousness that is almost impossible to fight against. This is why they're the only surviving dinosaurs. As Val describes, few of those who have experienced the crocodile's death role have lived to describe it. It is essentially an experience beyond words of total terror. Total helplessness, total certainty, experienced with undivided mind and body of a terrible death in the swirling depths. The role was a centrifuge of whirling,

boiling blackness, which seemed about to tear my limbs from my body, driving water into my bursting lungs, it lasted for an eternity, beyond endurance, but when I seemed all but finished, the rolling suddenly stopped. In utter disbelief, Val realized that she was still conscious. Somehow she had survived. She felt her feet touched the bottom of the river's bank, and she gasped for air. Life was, to her utter shock, still there for her to fight for, but it would have to be a fierce fight, because despite having a moment to stabilize and breathe, the crocodile still had its jaws around her. Before she had any real time to recover,

the crocodile pulled her under the water again and began to spin for a second time. Again, somehow Val made it through the second death roll. Despite being just as devastating, it seemed to her shorter than the first. She came back up, gasping for air, but just as before, the crocodile still had a tight grip on her. Instinctively, she flung her arm

out, a desperate reach for help, and grabbed onto the branch of a sandpaper fig tree on the bank of the river. Her main priority to keep her head above the water, but with the passing seconds, she was more and more sure she was going to die, and she was painfully aware that being death rolled would be one of the most painful ways to go. Then Val heard the animal emit a sinister, deeply disturbing, guttural growl. She nearly winced, waiting to feel the force of its body tugging her back under the water, but to her surprise, the crocodile relaxed its jaws, and now was her chance to escape. Holding tightly onto the tree branch, she tried to pull herself up and away. She rose a few inches, but the crocodile lunged, this time grabbing her around the thigh and

yanking her into yet another death roll. At that point, I would just be like, just take me, this is awful. I already don't like, I don't like roller coasters or spinning rides or anything. that makes my body move in ways that it just shouldn't where my equilibrium is just thrown. I get motion sickness. I'm not cut out for this world in those ways. And the fact that she's still conscious after these death rolls, I mean, this must be excruciating. Yeah. And she's also being drowned.

You know, like not only are you being disoriented, ripped apart, but you also can't breathe. You know, I've said it before. I am very afraid of crocodiles and alligators. I think they're like the top animal in the world that I'm fearful of. I'm not exactly sure why other than, you know, all of this. All of that, yeah. That I'm explaining. But, you know, other large predators do equally as terrifying things, I think.

But there's just something so prehistoric and robotic and scary about a crocodile. And just their sheer size, especially saltwater crocs, especially not. Nile crocodiles. I mean, the nature documentary footage of all these crocodiles kind of congregating in the rivers where the Great Migration passes through and stuff and they're just lying in wait for a zebra or buffalo. And at first, you see footage of it and you're like, damn, those look big and there's a lot of them and that's scary. But then you get something for scale. And you see this giant buffalo look like a little speck. They're like almost swallowing it whole. And then you really get a good idea of how large and just crazy powerful these animals are. And it's just so frightening.

It is frightening. I mean, like I said before, there's a reason that these have survived. I mean, they are basically dinosaurs and there's a reason that they have survived this long. And one, I think it's because of, I mean, just how they're built and the environments that they can survive in, but also things like this, how they kill their prey and how they find their prey. They're super efficient, you know, just, and I'm pretty sure, I mean, I wrote in here, like, evolution has carved them to be what they are today, which is like, yeah, they adapt very well. You know? Yeah. Okay.

So anyway, she's being death rolled again for the third time. God. Okay. In an astounding display of endurance, Val somehow survived this third attack. She was still alive, but growing weaker by the second. She could only keep fighting for so much longer before the crocodile would undoubtedly. win. She was, oh, here we are. I'm like, wow, that sounds like something I wrote, and here it is. She was locked in a fight with an animal perfectly crafted by millions of years worth of evolution

to be perfectly suited for this exact act, the act of killing. Val was sure that these now were her last moments in the river with this large, golden-eyed animal that was intent on ending her life. These moments, what she thought would be her last, were profound. She writes, I leapt through the eye of the crocodile into what seemed also a parallel universe, one with completely different rules to this normal universe. This harsh, unfamiliar territory was the Heracliton universe where everything flows, where we live the other's death, die the other's life, the universe represented in the food chain. I was suddenly transformed in the parallel universe into the form of a small, edible animal

whose death was of no more significance than that of a mouse. And as I saw myself as meat, I also saw with an incredible shock that I inhabited a grim, relentless, and deplorable world that would make no exceptions for me. No matter how smart I was, because like all living things, I was made of meat was nutritious food for another being.

Val was almost certain that these were her last breaths of air and that she was going to die, but she decided to make a bold decision and kind of like her last hurrah. Straight for the eyes. Well, after all the death rolling, she felt almost as if she was being played with and she was entirely uninterested in a slow, torturous death. Fair. She felt as though if she must die, she may as well just get it over with.

She attempted to provoke the crocodile in hopes of angering it so it would just kill her more quickly. She reached her hand back and tried to stab it in the eyes, but instead her fingers slid into the crocodile's nostrils. The animal didn't react at all. Her attempts to piss off an already angry animal failed. With a weakening body and spirit, she held tightly to her little tree branch and braced herself for another role. But then the crocodile's jaws relaxed once again, another small escape window was presented to her. She knew now that trying to escape via the tree was not going to watch. work, so instead she tried to make her way up the bank of the river, but the slopes were muddy and extremely slippery with freshly fallen rain. It would be a challenge for anyone to make their way

up these banks, let alone someone who was just ripped open and half drowned by a crocodile three times, who, by the way, stood waiting at the bottom of this river bank. She tried again, but after almost reaching the top, she began to slide down. No. With no other choice, she began to scramble up the bank but slid down. She tried again, but after almost reaching the top, she began to slide slowly down the riverbank again. Finally, she reached out and lashed on to some small patches of grass. And just like a really brief side note on this. As I was reading this, the first image that came to my mind was the scene from Homeward Bound. Do you remember Homeward Bound? Mm-hmm. Remember the first one, the first one, when it's at the very end, like shadow,

Chance and Sassy are like almost home. They're almost homebound. And then they're crossing these river, the river, these railroad tracks and they break through and they're like in this muddy pit. And Sassy and Chance get up and they're like, all right, come on, Shadow. And he's so old and tired. And he like makes it up a little bit and then slides back down. He gets up again and he slides back down. And Chance and Sassy are like, come on, come on. You can make it. And he's like, leave me. Go on without me. Do you remember that? I do vaguely remember it. now that you're saying it. And then like at the very end, it's like almost at the very end of the movie.

And then like the next scene is Chance and Sassy, you know, coming from the edge of the yard to the house and all the kids are so ecstatic to see them. And they realize Shadow wasn't there. Oh, yeah. And then Shadow makes like an appearance a few moments later. At the very end, they're like looking over the like field to the crest of the hill. And they're like waiting. And then like this dramatic music comes.

his head pops up and then he's like slowly and then he's there and everyone. Yeah. And he's like limp in a little. He's been through it, but he's, he made it. Yeah. But anyway. So that scene of like the going up and sliding down and just like feeling like so close but so far away in this like life or death type of situation is what I imagined at this point. And again in her article being prey, she describes what was going on in her mind and her brain during those moments of like, okay, I've escaped its jaws, but I'm still not out of reach and I can't move forward. She says, I thought, I can't make it. It'll just have to come and get me. It seemed a shame somehow, after all I had been through. The grass tuft began to give way, flailing wildly to stop myself from

sliding further. I found my fingers jamming into the soft mud that supported me. This was the clue I needed to survive. With the last of my strength, I climbed up the bank, pushing my fingers into the mud to hold my weight, reached the top, and stood up, incredulous. I was alive. But her fight for survival wasn't over yet. Though the crocodile hadn't killed her, it had done some serious damage, and she was badly injured and bleeding out. She began walking in the direction of the Ranger Station, but it was several long, aching miles away. At first, all Val felt was relief and disbelief that somehow she had managed to escape this crocodile's grasp. I imagine the adrenaline is running high at that point. Adrenaline, shock. Like, you're not even in your body. Yeah, you don't know

the full scale of the damage done either because you're just like so high on that adrenaline. And you're like, okay, now got to get to safety. And then I feel like away from there. Yeah. Yeah. And then slowly as that wears down, it's like, oh, wait. It's like, let me evaluate what's going on here. And that's what she did. Because as time went on, she was putting one staggering step in front of the other. The reality that death could still be coming for her, sunk in deeper. She was bleeding and horribly injured, alone in the middle of the park. Nobody expected her to be back at the Ranger station for some time. Ranger Miles thought she was testing the walking path and likely wouldn't notice anything was amiss for several more hours. Survival at the hands of the crocodile now turned to

survival alone in the wilderness with her injuries. She stopped her trek to evaluate her condition, to get a really good sense of just how bad her injuries truly were. Her left leg had been severe, severely injured, the flesh ripped open by the animal. The first order of business was to slow the bleeding that was coming from that leg, so she managed to use some clothing as a tourniquet. Trudging on, her legs began to fail her, but undeterred, she just started to crawl, pulling herself forward with an astounding display of mental and physical strength. After hours and hours of fighting to make her way to safety, her body finally reached its limit. Unable to continue any further, laid her head down and did the only thing left within her ability. She waited, waited and hoped

that by some stroke of luck, someone may find her. Back at the Ranger station, Ranger Greg Miles was starting to get worried. He had expected Val to be back and was growing concern that she may have gotten lost within the park. He began to put together a search party and climbed into a boat to head upstream. Every so often, he would stop the boat, cut the engine, call out into the darkness and wait to see if she responded. And for a while, he never heard anyone or anything call back. But then, at one point on that dark flooded river, he cut his engine, called out into the darkness, and finally heard something in return. It was a faint sound, and initially he wasn't even sure if it was coming from an animal or a person, but he heard the sound repeat, and it became apparent that it was indeed a human, yelling from the banks

of the river. From where she lay, Val could see the headlights of the boat on the river, and she mustered all the strength that she had left to yell and holler with all her might. Again, another scene in my mind, Rose, she's on the floating door. She goes and takes the whistle from that guy's dead body and starts whistling, even though it's really weak, but it's the last thing she has. Everything comes back to the Titanic. It's a superpower. I can connect almost anything back to the Titanic. She shouted that she had been attacked by a crocodile and needed help. Miles and the rest of the crew were stunned. They hadn't expected anything nearly this serious. They thought that maybe Val had just lost her way because of the flooding. It was making things hard to navigate and they weren't sure

how familiar she was with the landscape in the first place. So the last thing they thought was that she had just been mauled by a crocodile and was about to die. Miles and the rescue crew sprung into action. It became evident that Val's condition was incredibly serious. At this point, she was unable to stand, walk, or even crawl. If Miles and the search party hadn't found her that night, she almost certainly would have died by the next day, drowning in the flood, or simply because her injuries were so serious.

They rushed her to the hospital, but that was no easy task. Due to the downpour of all that rain, all the usual rivers and roads were flooded. They bravely navigated through the rivers and flooded swamps to meet an ambulance that transported Val to a hospital, but the trip took nearly 12 hours, and Val doesn't remember much.

of it. And this next part is a little perplexing and I couldn't really find much more information on how they determine this. But it does say that the next day, the crocodile that attacked Val was located and shot. But I'm just like, how do you know which one it is or was? Which one did it? Unless it was hanging around the remains of the canoe or something. You know, like maybe there was some indication. Right. But regardless, they killed a. animal that they felt was responsible for attacking her. But Val was not pleased with this decision at all. And there is, aside from her book, she wrote, there is a documentary called Cacadu Land of the Crocodile. And in it, she says that it was two months before I finally left

the hospital. So she was, like, her injuries were so bad. She was in the hospital for two months. And during that time, my anger at the shooting of that crocodile increased. It seemed such a pointless thing to do. Yeah. I mean, it was just acting as crocodiles do. It was nothing out of their nature. Yeah. Vow's encounter is unique in the way that she survived such an onslaught of repeated attacks and survived, but the simple fact that she was attacked is not unique within the park. Other crocodiles have attacked and killed humans in Kakadu. As of February of 2024, there have been five fatalities in total. One of the most since, I should say, obviously, since the park was established, in the 70s and official records started.

Okay. So potentially more. Probably. I'm going to, I would bet pretty much everything that there have been more, but since they started documenting five in total. One of the most dangerous areas in the park is a notoriously dangerous stretch of road that crosses the East Alligator River. And it is so dangerous, it is considered one of Australia's most treacherous roads. Not only does it often flood as the water rises with the tides, sweeping away vehicles like matchbox toys, but the water surrounding it is shockful of saltwater crocodiles who gather and lie in wait to feast on fish that are pushed and funneled

upstream here. And if you want to pause, I actually would like you specifically to pause and look this up so you have a visual on it because it's so scary. What's it called again? So it's called, did I even tell you? You told me the road, I think, if I said the name. I don't even think I told you. It's called Cahill's Crossing. Oh, no, you didn't. C-A-H-I-L. Oh, man. There's water on both sides of the road.

Yeah, and it's so close to the road that any sort of flooding or tidal change just, like, completely covers the road. And people who cross it are, like, pushing through water and will easily get swept away. And there's just crocodiles on either side of this road. And in the middle of the road, there's a picture that I'm looking at right now. And there's a car trying to pass and there's crocodiles just in the middle of the road. Yes. Okay. So imagine trying to cross that and being like if I get swept away, not only will I potentially drown in my car, but there are dozens of crocodiles just around me.

Waiting. Waiting to feast. They are found in such large numbers here. It creates a spectacle for those wishing to view them in the wild and the park advertises, albeit with heavy, heavy doses of caution that this area serves as. a perfect viewing spot for these animals. However, both crocs and people are drawn here for the good fishing, and several people have been taken by crocodiles while fishing and walking here, and dozens more have been injured. The park has gone through various efforts to help mitigate human

and crock encounters, but as we know, wildlife management is really tricky. Kakadu Park staff regularly survey waterways for crocodile populations and remove or relocate animals exhibiting concerning behavior towards people and have rolled out various education and safety measures like B Crockwise campaigns as crucial components of their management strategy, but negative interactions still persist. And I think it's just so cool because it's like they're doing B crockwise and we're always like be bear wise. Like in North America, it's all about bear safety and how to best stay safe in bear country.

And here it's just with crocodiles. As of the end of 2024, they are considering. implementing stricter monetary fines and even visitor eviction for visitors who continue to ignore the risks around crocodiles, which are often seen in locations such as Cahill. As they should. Because if people are, if they have signs everywhere and that's not enough for people to follow the rules, there should be, there should be consequences for your actions trying to help. Especially because then people get pissed and then they want the crocodiles to pay. And it's like, You walked straight up into your ankle deep in the river that is notorious for having.

I mean, one of the rangers, I forget his name, but he's like for every crocodile you see here, you can, I can almost promise you there's at least 10 that you cannot see. And very easily you can see dozens. So it is no secret that this area is just congested with them and you're really rolling the dice. I mean, do you really need to go fishing bad, bad? Yeah. Even from my quick Google search that I just did, I didn't see fishing photos that popped up, but there was, the first thing I noticed was there was a guy just sitting on a rock on the edge of the water. He looked like he was in a bathing suit. And then another photo, there was just a family standing right next to the water looking at the crocodiles. Like, those crocodiles are fast. Just because they're in the water doesn't mean they can't be out of the water in a second. Yeah. And they've definitely, they've lunged out and grabbed people before. Like, it's not like, you're going to see them coming all the time. And Australians are built different. I'll say that.

I've got a lot of stuff that can kill you in Australia. So maybe it just doesn't feel that scary in comparison. But yeah, but people have died. You know, it's a problem. And some attempts have been made by the park to relocate the problem crocodiles by trapping them and sedating them and relocating them. But Val was not convinced that this method was a good one. In her words, What really concerns me is the idea that if something becomes a problem, if there's a conflict with human interests, then it's the human interests that always win out. As Val saw it, it's vital that the natural world have independence from humans. It's not appropriate for people to try and control everything to make themselves comfortable.

So she was pissed, essentially, that the crocodiles were paying the price for human error and negligence and just not really respecting the dangers. I love that she still has this perspective even after. being the victim of an attack herself. She still understands and respects that this is nature and this is where they live and belong. Right. Val had always cared deeply about the natural world and held radical beliefs about humans' relationships with nature and kinship with other animals like I outlined at the beginning of the episode. But after the crocodile attack, things became even more visceral, vital and urgent for her. She wrote, that extreme heightening of consciousness

evoked at the point of death is, as many testify, of a most revelatory and life-changing kind. For those who, against all odds, are given a reprieve and survive. The extraordinary visions and insights that appear in those last seconds can be hard to reconcile with our normal view of the world. And that is my favorite quote that I pulled for this episode because I think it's so telling and just such an amazing statement that really touches. upon themes of hundreds of people who report their experiences after having a near-death experience, whether it's via an animal attack or anything, an attempted murder, a car accident, a medical

emergency, like people who either come right up to death and almost die or actually are pronounced dead and are revived or come back into their body, like the experiences and the life-changing transformation that they have because of those moments and either what they see or think they see or feel or experience, like really is hard to now like, it's hard to now live in life again after experiencing something like that. And I just thought it was really interesting that she reports that. And as someone who is really interested in your death experiences and reads a lot of them and people's different testimonies, this is something that is just repeated over and over.

In the crocodile attack, Val's normal view of the world completely shattered, and it only caused her work to expand and deepen. In 1990, Val got her PhD in philosophy from the Australian National University and published her thesis into the book, feminism and the mastery of nature, which became widely known, and she actually went on to give philosophy lectures in countries around the world, including the United States, Spain, Indonesia, Canada, and Finland. Very cool. The attack never left her mind, especially her realization and shock that the crocodile was trying

to kill and eat her. In the eye of the crocodile, she laid out many of the questions that she tried to parse out and through and process following the incident. And those questions included, but are not limited to, why could I not see myself as food? Why did that seem so wrong? In what sense was it wrong? Why was being food such a shock? What kind of shock was it?

Why did I do such dangerous things and not perceive my danger? Why did I not see myself as a subject of these kinds of dangers in this place? Why was I, as a critic of anthropocentrism, over many years, able to harbor so many illusions about human apartness? And I love that last question. She's like, I have been arguing this my entire life of the dangers. And yet I still had these feelings. Yeah.

It's like, this is my life's work. And I've argued it from top to bottom here, there and everywhere. wrote about it, thought about it, got degrees about it, and kind of like spread this message. And yet, when I'm faced with this life or death situation and really kind of got my own, like it's just in her face and she has these same questions. It's just, I thought that was so cool. She wrote a lot about how understanding that we are food grappling with humans as being prey, as being food, which was a radical way to re-envision people in ecological terms. She wrote extensively about how human nature dualism had large-scale impacts.

When we see ourselves as special and different and better than nature, we underestimate its power and agency in major ways. One example is how people don't take climate crisis seriously, because ultimately we believe humans are in control. In Vow's words, we have this illusionary sense of invulnerability. We don't understand ourselves as ecological beings. We don't understand ourselves as embedded in an ecosystem, because we think we are so totally special and apart.

Everything else is food for us, but we're not food for anything else. I think the message was that this is in an illusion and we are food just like everything else. She also spent a lot of time thinking and writing about death and what it reveals about both humanity and about nature. She wrote about how in Western culture we often go to great lengths to ensure that we are not reduced to food even in death. We bury loved ones in rigid coffins, separated from the earth and other species by tough, strong walls and engineered boundaries. Val was no stranger to death and grief even before her life-altering incident on that river.

When she was just 19 years old, she gave birth to a son. His father was a man she met at school and married for a period of time, and his name was John. Two years later, they had a daughter, but both John and Val were really young and unable to properly support their two children. Knowing she couldn't give her daughter the life that she deserved, Val made the extremely difficult decision to put her up for adoption. But even more heart-shattering, her daughter's life came to a devastating end when she was murdered in her teenage years. Her son's life was also cut much too short. He died of a degenerative illness in his 20s. And Val didn't share or write much openly about the tragic loss of her two children,

but she chose to bury her son in a cemetery where his body could decompose naturally and help fuel the life of organisms and plants that lived and grew there. She wrote about how in death human and nature dualism in Western culture is exemplified. We see the mind as higher and mightier and somehow more human than the body. Many religions and cultures believe that after death, the soul leaves the body and lives on, while the body is now no longer truly human without it. The soul, which the Western world sees as more important than the body, will be saved and sent to heaven where it will be eternal.

But the body is finite and stuck here on earth to break down no longer of value to the soul. And in Val's words, bodies must perish, but the soul, the true self, has eternal life in a realm apart. Such transcendental solutions to the problem of identity and continuity depend on denying our kinship to other life forms and our shared end as food for others. Funerary practices deplore or demonize materiality, hyper-separating the body from the earth and hindering to that benefits other life forms. In 2008, at the age of 68, Val died of a stroke. Even in death, she remained both true to her values and a leader in eco-feminism. Her burial was very fitting to everything she studied and wrote about.

She talked the talk, and ultimately, she walked the walk. She was buried in her garden on Plumwood Mountain in an eco-barial, where her body could decompose and continue to be a vital, natural part of the food chain. Her loved ones gathered and celebrated her life, placing a sea of brightly colored flowers atop her burial site. Val Plumwood led an incredibly influential life and left behind a vibrant legacy. Plumwood Incorporated is a non-profit organization devoted to furthering her legacy. They worked together with local indigenous communities, artists, and activists, too, as stated on their website,

facilitate decolonial and eco-cultural change. In 2024, the organization returned the ownership of the organization of the organization of, the land on Plumwood Mountain to the indigenous people of the UN nation. The decision to return the land to its original stewards was strongly influenced by Val's own philosophies and her understanding that environmental conservation must be coupled with decolonial practices. During her burial as her loved ones gathered around her, a butterfly landed on her flower-covered grave. As it flapped its wings and flew away, one of Val's friends leading the service asked the land to welcome her home.

Val's body just as sacred as her soul decomposed and melted into the greater picture of the land that she so dearly loved. Her time had come as she always knew it would to become food. And that is the story of Val Plumwood and her really, really cool life. I love the way you ended it. I feel like that was one of my favorite endings that you've done for an episode. It was. It was very full circle. And I really love that her values in life carry.

over into her values and death as well. Yep. Yeah, she was a force. She did a lot. I really loved her story not only because I think her survival was wild, but also because she was such a deep thinker. And I really connect with and am intrigued by people who question, like, meaning and want to know, like, what is the purpose of this?

and like just look at life in a different way and kind of like dig through the grime of like, I don't know. I don't know what I'm even trying to say. I'm so tired. But like I'm just, I really liked her. And I liked the way that she viewed the world, the questions that she asked, the different perspectives that she offered and even evaluated for herself. Like, you know, she spent so much of her life being like, you're not special.

I'm not special. we're all part of this big, large thing. And then when her time ultimately came to put that mentality to the test, even she rebuked it. And she's like, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. But then she really like came to accept it. And I don't know, I just loved it. I really enjoyed it.

And she has a lot of books, a lot of works. Again, the Eye of the Crocodile is a book that she was working on before her death. So it's partially her writing, but also completed by others. And then she has other, a lot of essays and other writing. works if you're interested in the eco-feminism and human nature duality stuff that I'll of course link in the sources and stuff but yeah add it to the book list I'll put it on the book wrecks on the website that's my favorite thing like after we do a website I'm like what books did we use and then I just like added on their list is getting really long we have a lot of a lot of books that

are referenced in our in our show in general well what do you think cassie what what a day that was What a day. We have made it. We're at the end of our four episode recording. We hope you enjoy everything that we put out today because it will genuinely hurt our feelings if you didn't. But what a great way to just get the out of here. Yep. Let's go to Montana, shall we? Yeah. It's so funny because this is coming out like two weeks after we get back. I know you guys will be listening to this when all of our travels are done. And we'll be totally different people by then with new experiences that we can't wait to share with you all. But until then, until we're those people, enjoy the view.

But watch you back. Bye, everyone. See you. Thank you for joining us again this week. If you love National Park After Dark and want to hear exclusive bonus stories, join us on Patreon or Apple subscriptions. Patreon subscribers have access to our National Park After Dark book club, live streams, discord, and much more. If you prefer to watch our episodes, video episodes are now available on YouTube. If you're enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on your favorite listening platform.

And to follow along with all our adventures, you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and X at National Park After Dark. You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you may not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with progressives save over $900 on average. over to progressive.com, answer some questions, and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount. Visit progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little cash back. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $946 by new customers surveyed, who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025. Potential savings will vary.