Wyndham Crocodile Park residents find new home with Darwin buyer (ABC)

A buyer has finally been found for more than 50 crocodiles from an animal park that shut down in the east Pilbara region of Western Australia.

The salt water crocs - and two American alligators - were put on the market last year following the closure of Wyndham Crocodile Park.

Struggling to find a buyer for land, the owners decided to offload the reptiles to make the site more attractive to developers.

Park Director Paul Cavanagh said a Darwin crocodile farmer had agreed to buy the lot.

"A fellow that owns most of the crocodile farms in Darwin, he's going to come and pick them up and put them in his farm within the next few weeks," he said.

"I'm probably going to miss them a bit. If I had enough money I'd keep them as pets. But at least they're going to a good home, that's the main thing."

The crocodiles are expected to be kept as breeding stock, due to their size and advanced age.

Mr Cavanagh said trucking the crocodiles across the border would be no easy feat.

"They'll subdue them a bit, give them something to settle them down. Big animals can be tricky to shift if you don't treat them right, because they can fret and die," he said.

"But they're the experts so I'll be leaving that to them."

The owners said if sold individually to aquariums in the eastern states, the larger crocodiles could have fetched $25,000 each, but they have agreed to sell the lot for $30,000.

It is the end of an era for the town of Wyndham, where despite the park's closure, an enormous sculpted crocodile still looms over a park at the entry to town.

A decline in visitor numbers made the park unviable as a tourist operation.

And while some small-scale farming for crocodile leathers was attempted, the owners found it too hard to compete with large producers in the Northern Territory.

The owners said the overgrown park, with its murky crocodile ponds and alligator cages, would be cleared and rezoned as industrial land.

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