Where They Are: A Range Guide to Australasia

Use this section the way you would use a map. It lays out, as plainly as we can manage, where the crocodilians of Australasia actually live, down to the state and territory in Australia and the country and coastline across Asia. Before you get in, near, or on the water anywhere in this half of the world, you should be able to answer one question. Is this crocodilian country? Here is how to tell.

The saltwater crocodile, Crocodylus porosus

This is the animal that dominates the whole edition, and it holds the largest range of any crocodilian alive. Picture a single arc of coast and river running from the east coast of India, down through Southeast Asia and the Indonesian archipelago, across New Guinea, out into the western Pacific, and onto the northern shoulder of Australia. Everywhere along it, the saltie is a coastal and estuarine animal: tidal rivers, mangrove creeks, estuaries, coastal swamps and the sea itself, which it crosses freely between islands. It pushes well inland up the big rivers in the wet season and retreats toward the coast in the dry. Australia sits at the quiet southern end of that arc. It is the same animal from end to end.

Australia, the saltie's southern frontier