SYDNEY - FINDING a crocodile on the Australian south coast is strange. Finding an American alligator there is even stranger.

So police assumed they had a crocodile, a native of Australia's tropical north, when vacationers caught a reptile in a volleyball net late on Monday that had been wandering around their campsite in Pambula, New South Wales.

State police on Tuesday corrected an initial press statement to explain that the 1.5m reptile was, in fact, an alligator.

Odder still, Craig Adam, manager of the Australian Reptile Park zoo in the state, told the NineMSN website that the captured creature belonged to a species native to the south-eastern United States.

Alligators tend to live in freshwater and have wide u-shaped snouts, where as crocodiles are usually found in saltwater. They have longer, pointy snouts.

Police said checks have revealed that no one is licensed to keep either a crocodile or an alligator in the area. They are still investigating where the alligator came from. -- AP