A Note Before You Begin

By Tom Crutchfield, Kevin McCurley, Stacey Crutchfield, and Braxton Warren, with Citadel Culebra.

This book is about the crocodiles of Australasia. First, what that word means, because most people are hazy on it. Australasia is the great arc of coast, island and river that runs from the Indian subcontinent, across Southeast Asia and the Indonesian archipelago, over New Guinea, and down onto the northern edge of Australia. Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Borneo, the whole sprawl of Indonesia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and the Pacific islands, and the Top End, the Kimberley and tropical Queensland of Australia. One region, one connected stretch of crocodile country. And above all, one animal that holds nearly all of it: the saltwater crocodile, Crocodylus porosus, the most widely distributed reptile on Earth and, in raw numbers, the one that kills most people. Follow the coast from the mouths of the Ganges and the Sundarbans of India and Bangladesh, down through Indonesia, across the Philippines and the length of New Guinea, out to the Solomon Islands and, at the far edge, Vanuatu. Then south, to Australia. This is a book for anyone who lives, works, or travels anywhere along that arc, and for anyone who might wander down to the water there not knowing what shares it.