A five-year-old girl has survived a close encounter with a two-metre salt water crocodile in Australia's Northern Territory.
The girl sustained deep cuts to her leg on Sunday while swimming at Caledon Bay in northeast Arnhem Land, about 120 kilometres south of Nhulunbuy.
Duty Superintendent Mike Murphy told ABC Radio
it was unclear whether the crocodile directly attacked the girl or if she disturbed it.
"I believe it's from the rear foot of the crocodile," he said.
"Obviously the claws have gouged her and basically slashed her leg open.
"We weren't able to find the croc."
The girl was taken to a nearby community for first aid before being taken to Gove Hospital.
The incident comes less than a week after a professional fisherman survived being bitten several times by a salt water crocodile while searching for sea cucumbers off the Cobourg Peninsula, northeast of Darwin.
A coronial inquest into the death of an 11-year-old girl, who was taken by a crocodile in Darwin's rural area in March last year, will begin in Darwin on Monday.
Shortly after the girl's death, the Northern Territory government released a new crocodile management plan, which was approved by the Commonwealth in October.
The girl's mother, Charlene O'Sullivan, hopes the coronial inquest will prompt changes to crocodile management policies.
Several recent media reports have shown people dancing on croc traps and swimming in waterholes where crocodiles have been spotted, prompting calls for awareness and education programs, and advertising campaigns to be stepped up.
The inquest, coupled with an increase in both crocodile and human populations in the Top End, as well as the two recent attacks, are likely to put the long-debated and highly contentious issues of culling and trophy hunting back on the agenda.
- AAP
