‘I woke up to crocodile biting my foot’

A teenage camper today told how he fought off a huge crocodile which attacked him as he slept in his tent.

Peter Rowsell, 19, said: “It was about 4.30 in the morning and I was sleeping... and then I woke up and there was something shaking my foot. It was about three or four metres long.”

He punched the predator on the nose as it bit his right foot and leg. “It was on my foot for 10 or 15 seconds but it let go after I whacked it once or twice.”

The teenager had been camping with his family near a creek in the Daly region of Australia’s Northern Territory.

He told broadcaster ABC the crocodile came through a hole in his tent, which was pitched 15 metres from the water’s edge. Mr Rowsell’s sister and her partner — who were sleeping in a car — woke to his screams yesterday and drove him to hospital, where he was kept overnight and treated for non-life threatening puncture wounds to his right leg.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said: “He’s very lucky.”