AUSTRALIA - KANGAROOS AND KOALAS

Someone I met in Costa Rica is currently in Australia and has been posting various pictures and hilarious snippets on Facebook bringing back a flood of memories of when I was in Australia.

While I was there, I wanted desperately to see two animals:  A Kangaroo and a Koala.

Just as desperately, I did not want to run into a funnel web spider, or countless other dangerous and creepy creatures, and would tentatively look under my mattresses for fear of being surprised by the funnel web spider while I slept.   

I had gone caving and spelunking in California some time before Australia, and a man named Pete had been on our tour of 3 people total plus a guide.  Being in the caves tromping around in the mud and crawling through tight spaces for 6 hours forged a particular bond between us.  Pete, a Kiwi from New Zealand, shared some of his beer and snacks with us afterwards at a picnic table and told us about his encounter with a funnel web spider while living in Australia.

His story involved running into the spider in his garage.  He used his hand to create intense gestures like shadow puppets in broad daylight, curling the fingers up to show us how the funnel web spider had reared up on its hind legs at him as he stood frozen looking at its fangs. 

The images from Pete’s story were firmly stuck in my mind.  One of the first things I did when I got a traveler’s guide to Australia was to look up the funnel web spider.  I read the brief description but was dismayed to find the guidebook didn’t include a photograph.  What? WHY NOT?!  Is it because it is so deadly and horrific that nobody can get close enough to take a picture of the thing?  Why isn’t there a picture?  My imagination went wild, conjuring up images of immense spiders rearing up on their hind legs ready to inject you with their poisonous fangs at the faintest hint of movement.

This is how I arrived and traveled in Australia, fearing this spider and the images in my mind.

I had gone with my boyfriend at the time, traveling to Sydney first and staying there a few days before heading up north staying in Arlie Beach, Magnetic Island, and Cairns.   On one segment of the trip we took a bus, and on another we rented a car.  I made him drive because I was too chicken to drive on the “other side of the road”, fearing I would take a wrong turn out of habit and kill us both.  I had enough of a hard time even crossing a street in Sydney, my head always automatically turning to the left to look for cars.

He obliged and we began our driving adventure on Australia’s highways, which were basically just 2 lanes of long, straight stretches with nowhere to pull over except a few designated spots and very different from the 6 lane highways we were accustomed to in California.  Along the way there were signs that said things like, “REST STOP OR DEAD STOP”, cheery Aussie reminders that you had better be alert while driving and pull over at the few places along the way.

Soon after beginning our driving journey, I see something strange on the side of the road.  It appears to be two things sticking out of a ditch.  It takes some moments to realize that they are legs and that it is a kangaroo, not only dead, but in the stiff, cartoonish pose of legs and feet sticking up as though waiting for the wide Australian sky to lift him up. 

I still have not seen a Koala, but now I can say I’ve seen a kangaroo….sort of.  As we drive on we see more legs sticking up, and then another pair, and another.  The dead kangaroos make me feel incredibly sad and selfishly disappointed. 

“I don’t want to see another dead kangaroo, I want to see a LIVE kangaroo.”  My intentions are said aloud and my heart’s desire echoed throughout the Universe, well before the misguided and misinformed revelations of “The Secret”.

I am tired of seeing the kangaroo carnage on the roadside.  Rest stop or DEAD stop indeed! 

We continue driving on the 2 lane road lined with trees and sugar cane and littered with kangaroo carcasses.  We arrive upon an area that has a clearing, with small brush on either side.  Then suddenly we see it like a beautiful dream come true: a kangaroo – A LITTLE JOEY! – bounding along in the brush with the most joyful hops.  Each leap is in slow motion filtered through bright sunlight and we hang on his every bounce, and when the moment is upon us that we realize he is bounding straight for the road we are driving on, everything continues in slow motion as if teasing us to stop time but we cannot, and with nowhere to swerve safely without killing ourselves, we hit the little joey with the full force of a 4000 pound hunk of metal. 

Mortified, we pull over at the first place we can, some type of roadside joint.  A car pulls in with us.  He had been driving behind us and saw the whole thing.  In his Australian accent, he offers comforting words about how there was nothing we could do, that the little joey probably went off and became part of the food chain, and that we were lucky it wasn’t a larger kangaroo because our car could have been totaled.  I am not feeling so reassured.

That was the only live kangaroo I saw and we killed it.  I never did see a Koala or a funnel web spider for that matter.