Crocodile escapades
Crocodiles are the world’s largest reptiles, some like the saltwater variety, having been recorded in modern times to 8m in length.
The late Mrs Kris Pawlowski shot an 8.3m monster in the Norman River, below Karumba, in 1957. Our family were good friends with the Pawlowski clan. She once told me that she had shot more than 3000 crocodiles in the Gulf Country.
Armed with a Winchester Model 70 rifle in .270 Winchester calibre, topped with a Pecar 4x12 scope and loaded with 130-grain Winchester Silvertip ammunition, she stalked the sleeping giant and killed it with one shot.
Her husband Ron, a respected freelance outdoor writer and wildlife film producer, had three frames left on his 35mm Nikon camera and used them before an incoming tide forced the couple to leave the carcass. They tied it up to a mangrove tree and returned at low tide to find that the rope had broken, and the carcass had vanished.
Ron, who submitted photographs to international photo agencies, sent the three 35mm Kodachrome slides off to London and New York but never heard what happened to them. Some unkind people said that the crocodile was a hoax, but I knew locals who lived in Karumba at the time and the big saurian was a regular sighting when it drifted in and out with the
