Crocodiles are large, semiaquatic reptiles that belong to the family Crocodylidae. There are 14 species of crocodiles, with the largest being the saltwater crocodile, which can grow up to 6-7 meters (20-23 feet) in length and weigh more than 1,000 kg (2,200 pounds). Crocodiles have a wide geographic range and can be found in Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas.

A struggling immigrant family’s lives were changed forever when the glamorous matriarch picked up a rifle and shot a crocodile between the eyes.

Krystyna ‘Krys’ Pawlowski had been crocodile 𝙝.𝙪𝙣.𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 for two years when she shot the 8.6-metre monster in 1957 on the McCarther Bank in the Norman River, Queensland.

Hunters had tried to get this croc for decades and were astounded that a ‘lady’ did what no man could.

That shot would make the family famous because at 8.6 metres, the reptile was, and still is, the biggest ever 𝙠𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙙 or captured in Australia.

Krys’s famous croc-hunting career started in 1955 in Kaumba, in Queensland’s Gulf Country when a 12-foot reptile started creeping up on her three-year-old daughter, Barbara.

‘My brother came out and saw it and yelled “Barbara, crocodile!” and my father grabbed a rifle and shot it between the eyes,’ Krys’s son George Pawlowski told Daily Mail Australia.

The Polish immigrants, who came to Australia in 1949 and had been struggling to get by, realised they’d struck gold when they took the beast to be skinned.