Thursday 28 September 2006

Beware of the ...

I'm going to collect warning signs from around the country. Not literally. I have no plans to rip them off their posts and jam them into the boot of the car, whistling nonchalantly all the while. I mean with the camera.

The cassowary signs are all over the place. It's not that much of a challenge getting a photograph of one of these. (It's a bit more of a challenge getting a photo while avoiding the speeding traffic.) I took this picture near Bramston Beach.

Even more abundant on the coastal plain are the signs warning visitors of estuarine crocodiles. This one was beside the track to Eubenangee Swamp. Not that you'd want to swim in the Alice River.

The sign I really wanted to photograph featured a tree kangaroo. As was the case with cassowary and chick, the tree kangaroo was rendered as something of a mutant. A bit like a ground sloth with a tail. Although there are a few examples along the Malanda – Millaa Millaa road, I couldn't find a good spot to stop. When I did locate a site, some bugger of a cop set up a radar trap on it. I could have asked him to move but I thought that I might just leave him to it.

(Last time I saw mobile speed radar in FNQ, the cop in charge had enclosed the whole unit in a plastic bag to keep off the rain . I guess it minimised the paperwork.)