19-year-old ‘very lucky’ to be alive after crocodile grabbed his right foot and pulled him from his tent while on a fishing trip in the Daly region near Katherine

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

A 19-year-old man is recovering in hospital after he was pulled from his tent by a crocodile in Australia’s Northern Territory in the early hours of Monday morning.

Northern Territory removes 290 saltwater crocodiles from waterways in a year Read more

The man was camping with his family near a creek in the Daly region, about two hours’ drive from Katherine.

The family were on a fishing trip, Guardian Australia was told, and had set up camp about 15 metres from the water’s edge. At about 4.30am a crocodile grabbed the young man’s right foot.

The NT health department believes the man was asleep at the time of the attack but is yet to interview him directly.

“He somehow or other managed to kick it away with his other foot,” a spokeswoman said, describing the man as “very lucky”.

The family immediately drove him to Katherine, where he remained in hospital in a stable condition on Monday afternoon. The spokeswoman said he was “shaken”.

He had non-life threatening puncture wounds to his lower right leg, and was on an antibiotics drip due to the bacteria in the mouths of crocodiles.

It was unclear how big the crocodile was.

Residents of the Northern Territory and visitors are warned to stay away from river systems and water holes, where saltwater crocodiles are common.

Last year the National Parks department launched an animated awareness campaign urging people to be “crocwise”. The video was distributed in several different Indigenous languages as well as English.

Since culling of the animals was banned in the early 1970s, population numbers have boomed. Amid increasing concern about the danger they pose to people, there have been calls for a return to wider culls and high-end safari-style hunting. The Northern Territory government recently announced an increase in the number of animals and eggs that could be legally harvested for the crocodile farming trade.

Last year a coronial inquest examined the circumstances around two fatal attacks in the Northern Territory. Bill Scott, 62, was pulled from his boat by a 4.6m crocodile in 2014, as his family watched.

Death of man snatched by crocodile from boat is a warning, coroner says Read more

Lanh Van Tran, 57, was taken in the Adelaide River after he waded into the water to unsnag his fishing line. His wife, who saw the attack, said her husband had thought there were no crocodiles in the area.

Also last year a 12-year-old boy was killed by a crocodile in Kakadu national park.

Across the border in Western Australia, a 68-year-old woman was attacked in January, losing her hand and forearm – later found in the crocodile’s stomach.

In March a woman was mauled during a feeding show at a wildlife park in north Queensland.