Animals on the Road

There was plenty of wildlife other than cattle and sheep roaming ‘free range’ along the way that we needed to be wary of even in the middle of the day.  Mainly kangaroos and emus but plenty of feral goats out this way too.  Let me tell you that big bodies coupled with small brains, i.e.: kangaroos and emus, does not make for a good combination when it comes to road sense!  Please, let me set the scene for you…

We were motoring along in our 2.5 tonne ute (pick-up truck) at between 80 and 90 km/h, towing 3 tonnes of caravan behind us on a loose gravel surface when a pair of emus ran across the road well ahead of us – they must have been about 100m or so up the road.  As a natural reaction, I eased off of the pedal a little because the combined 5.5 tonne rig does not stop or even slow down as quickly as the ute alone, especially when on gravel roads.  It turned out to be a good thing too as one of the emus, then decided that it wanted to go back to whence it had just come and proceeded to bolt back across the road – this time right in front of us!  I felt sure we were going to put the Bull bar / Roo bar to use and unfortunately hit the thing.  We were both saying/yelling, “Oh oh…Look Out!” and “Wait for It!”, and bracing ourselves for the impact and a cloud of feathers.  As it turned out we ended up missing it by the narrowest of margins!

After our hearts stopped racing, we remembered, or realised, that the dash cam that we have on our vehicle should have captured it all, and sure enough, it had!  We watched the footage on the laptop to see just how close a call the emu had.  When reviewed frame by frame it was only the arching of its back with a fraction of a second to spare that saved it from being roadkill!  Below are last three frames from the dash cam.  The first is a great Road-runner impersonation, and the last one where it appears to be arching its back to just squeeze past the bulbar and is looking back at us.  Some pretty good screen shots from the dash cam video.

Great Roadrunner imitation!

Just missed!

The picture below, by a local NSW artist called John Murray, is probably something akin to the view the emu had of us!

Emu's View of Oncoming Traffic?

Well that is enough for this post.  Reliving the ordeal has got me all wound up again so I think I need to put my e-pen down and have a beer and relax.  That all for this instalment of WTF? – Where are The Farrows?