A struggling immigrant family's lives were changed forever when the glamorous matriarch picked up a rifle and shot a crocodile between the eyes.
Krystyna 'Krys' Pawlowski had been crocodile hunting for two years when she shot the 8.6-metre monster in 1957 on the McCarther Bank in the Norman River, Queensland.
Hunters had tried to get this croc for decades and were astounded that a 'lady' did what no man could.
That shot would make the family famous because at 8.6 metres, the reptile was, and still is, the biggest ever killed or captured in Australia.
Krys's famous croc-hunting career started in 1955 in Kaumba, in Queensland's Gulf Country when a 12-foot reptile started creeping up on her three-year-old daughter, Barbara.
'My brother came out and saw it and yelled "Barbara, crocodile!" and my father grabbed a rifle and shot it between the eyes,' Krys's son George Pawlowski told Daily Mail Australia.
The Polish immigrants, who came to Australia in 1949 and had been struggling to get by, realised they'd struck gold when they took the beast to be skinned.
Pictured: The 8.6-metre saltwater crocodile believed to be shot by Krystyna and Ron Pawlowski in 1955 at the Norman River, Karumba
'An old-timer in the town helped us skin the crocodile and we sent it off to a dealer in Brisbane and finished off getting 10 pounds for it,' Mr Pawlowski said.
'In those days 13 pounds was the basic weekly wage, so Dad (Ron Pawlowski) thought they were on to something.'
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