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Croc-killing mangrove man Errol Copley sells Far North Queensland property to makers of Croc Piss rum

Cairns man Errol Copley has had a colourful life as a cane farmer, mangrove plucker and croc killer.  (ABC News: Chris Calcino)

Mangroves, the moon landing, a dead crocodile and reptile urine all have one man in common – and he is ready to spill his guts.

Anyone peering over the Cairns Esplanade for the past 17 years may have seen a lone figure trudging across the mudflats with oversized boots and a bucket in tow.

It was Errol Copley, a man who until recently boasted one of the most bizarre job titles Far North Queensland has to offer.

He was the Mangrove Man of Cairns – but that is just one element of this complicated man.

Copley is a semi-retired sugarcane farmer, commercial fisherman, fount of knowledge when it comes to some of Far North Queensland's murkier history, and a crocodile killer.

Mud-slinging on the glitter strip

The Cairns Esplanade is a picturesque tourist hotspot with a sweeping man-made swimming lagoon that overlooks the gateway to the Coral Sea.

At high tide, water laps against pylons that shore up a popular boardwalk – but at low tide a long, flat expanse of mud attracts some of the world's rarest wading birds.

That was not always the case.

Historian Timothy Bottoms' thorough A History of Cairns: City of the South Pacific 1770-1995 quotes a visiting writer who recorded some rather grandiose memories of his arrival at the Strand Hotel "on the beach of Cairns" in 1922.

The Cairns Esplanade and its sandy beach as pictured in about 1895. (Supplied: State Library of Queensland)

"The white beach invited our attention first, and we strolled along it," he wrote.

"It stretched like a band of pearl and saffron along the blue water's rim, dotted with palm trees, with giant fig trees, and flame trees just bursting into flower."

Such charming prose was rendered void by 1936, after the dredge TSS Trinity Bay had been clearing shipping channels for more than two decades, and the editor of the Bendigo Advertiser made a grim observation.

That sounds much more like the modern-day esplanade – and without mud-men like Copley, those million-dollar views would be obscured by a mangrove forest.

What the hell is a mangrove man?

It was his job to pluck any mangrove saplings that dared poke their heads from the mud, to stop nature's incessant attempts to claim the esplanade.

"I was a commercial fisherman, barra-netting on the esplanade, and the mangroves needed picking," Copley says.

"The port authority gave me a contract through the council to start picking mangroves there, to keep the mangroves off the esplanade.

"Originally we were picking from a small punt, so a boat, and then as we progressed we went into walking the mudflats with specially designed mud boots which gave us a bigger opportunity between the tides."

Errol Copley does not think working as a mangrove plucker is at all strange. (ABC News: Chris Calcino)

These were not your regular sneakers.

They were great, clunky plastic things that looked like the love child of a tennis racquet and a shovel – and there is some science behind them.

"They're called mudders," Copley explains. 

"They're designed on a heron's foot, where it splays out on contact so it gives you a big surface area, so you can't go down in the mud.

"Then as you lift your foot, that hinged plastic folds back in."

The Cairns Esplanade is now home to a wide expanse of mudflats where there was once a sandy white beach.  (Flickr: Peter Asquith)

And so the Mangrove Man plied his trade on the mudflats for 17 years, until the contract was reassigned to a traditional owners group earlier this year.

Most people would agree it was a fairly strange job, but Copley is not most people.

"I don't think it was strange. It wasn't strange to me," he said.

"As a commercial fisherman I was pulling mangroves out to get nets into shore all my life, basically.

"It just happened to be that someone wanted to pay me to pull out mangroves where I was netting."

A dead croc, and a call from Katter

Copley made headlines in 2018 after pleading guilty to killing a whopping saltwater crocodile on his Deeral cane farm.

He would later insist it was a case of suicide but, whatever the case, he wore the charge.

The cane farmer, then aged 69, had tied a 4-metre-long wire mackerel fishing line around a tree on his Deeral property, skewered a chunk of meat onto a large hook, and then drove back to his home about half an hour away in Woree.

When he returned, a 3-metre saltie was lying there, dead as a doornail.

Kennedy MP Bob Katter threw his support behind Errol Copley after legal proceedings were launched. 

Unbeknownst to him, authorities were well aware of the reptile's unfortunate fate and had set up hidden cameras trained to its cadaver.

Wildlife officers captured footage of Copley using his ute to drag away the corpse, leading to his guilty plea on a charge of taking a protected animal without authority.

He initially copped a $500 fine, but authorities lodged an appeal and he wound up with a $3,000 penalty.

Copley still insists he did not "kill" the creature.

"Down on my farm at Deeral, there was a crocodile incident and I put my hand up for it," he says.

"Eventually I got a fine of $3,000 and I elected to do community service work.

"But yes, Bob, he was very supportive of my case and in fact sent a cheque to me to pay the fine.

"I sent it back to him and said use it for [a] campaign donation."

Police found this crocodile's head during the search of a property at Deeral. (Supplied: Queensland Police Service)

What's this about crocodile wee?

Copley's days hunched over the mire are now over, and he is keen to take a back seat from the sugar industry as well.

He has managed to find perhaps the most bizarrely appropriate buyer for, as he puts it, "the farm where the, um, crocodile incident happened".

FNQ Spirits' signature liquor, Croc Piss.  (Supplied)

The garrulous fellow has just closed the sale of his Deeral property to the maker of FNQ Spirits – a local distillery that has an unforgettably named liquor as its flagship product.

"They use sugarcane and molasses for the distillery, but it's an advantage for him to have sugarcane.

"I think it's going to be something touristy-wise, because my property adjoins the highway and he wants to take advantage of that."

Sugar cane on Copley's Deeral farm is set to be transformed into liquor.  (ABC: Melanie Groves)

He finds the whole situation hilarious, but you won't find Copley actually drinking the spirit.

"I don't drink Croc Piss … I don't drink rum," he says. "But the coffee liqueur is quite good."

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