Stupid Koala's

[Freuds_Cat]

OK I've made many a mention of the Koala problems here but last night was particularly bad.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/02/2784156.htm

Woman killed in crash after dodging koala

South Australian police say a woman has died in a car crash near Bridgewater, in the Adelaide Hills, after she swerved to avoid hitting a koala.
The 35-year-old woman's car hit a pylon on the Bridgewater Overpass just after midnight.
Her partner, a 36-year-old man and her 11-year-old daughter were in the car at the time, but received only minor injuries.
The woman's death is the first on South Australian roads this year.

These damn animals appear cute any cuddly but are a bloody nuisance. They are not native here and at this time of year its rutting season so the males roam. At night they sound like a bad horror movie sound track from a drunk foley guy.
The older males can stand up to the same height as my 5 year old son Nicholas who is 1.2m (nearly 4ft) tall.

The last month or so has seen at least 2 Koala roadkill a week between my place and the bottom of the freeway through the hills. Unfortunately for the family involved the woman probably tried to dodge the Koala and lost control of the car. My wif is under strict instruction to slow the car as much as is reasonably possible in a straight line and hit the bastards. Never swerve.

[OldManC]

Never swerve. Best advice you could give. My dad always posed it this way, "Who do you want dead, the cat/dog/deer, etc., or you?" I love animals as much as the next guy, but there's no question for me as to who wins in that equation.

[Lightyear]

Yes, never swerve!  My brother was killed a few years back by a guy that tried to avoid a deer on a two lane asphalt country road.  Mind you the guy was probably going 55+ and when he hit the gravel shoulder lost control and shot back across into opposing traffic - this was at the crest of a hill when he hit my brother head on.  We like to think that he didn't see it coming...

[Pilgrim]

Yup. You have to fight the impulse to dodge the animal, OR you better darn well have a good sense of precisely how much you CAN swerve without losing control.  I've twitched a car aside from a deer and gotten away with it..but I knew I had one move and only one, and after that it was up to the deer.

[Freuds_Cat]

#$%^&@   add Kangaroo's to that as well!   Missed 2 of the bastards tonight. One on my way down from Lenswood near the Henschke Lenswood vineyard for those of you who know your wine, and another lower down the hill on my way back home. 

[OldManC]

You should install one of these on the front of your cars:



You could launch the bastards 50 feet or more!

[Lightyear]

Most of the roadkill around here, nowadays, tends to be possums, skunks, rabbits, armadillos and a rare coyote.  There are quite few pockets of land that folks have cattle and horses on as well though most of these are kept well fenced. 

One thing that I've heard on hitting a large animal is to definately not brake as this causes the front end of  your vehicle to nose dive thus funneling the animal into your windshield/passenger compartmnet - just let off the gas a hit it.

[ack1961]

We used to watch the Road Trains come into Alice Springs with all sorts of meat stuck in the bull bars.  Nothing slows down a fully armored tractor pulling 5 trailers full of cattle.  Roo's, Horses, Camels, Cows, Wombats...no chance 

[Freuds_Cat]

Steve, if you know Alice then you will know of Katherine. I grew up there. Big cattle country and yes I remember those road trains. Buntine roadways I think was the biggest company. I've crossed the Nullabor plain 3 times, once at night. Its basically the longest straight stretch of road in the world. Roughly a thousand Kms of treeless salt bush in the middle bottom of the country between Adelaide and Perth. The only way to do it at night in a car is to find a road train going slow enough to sit behind or pay the penalty. It was totally surreal, like one of those weird 70's outback thriller movies. The amount of blood and guts splatagated on the road was just amazing. I distinctly remember sitting behind a triple trailer truck pulling 1 metre diameter pipes and struggling to keep with him doing 145kph. The other trucks were going faster. Anyway I remember seeing on the road at one stage a double red sillouette  in the shape of 2 kangaroos slightly overlapping just before a slight barump! I never drove it at night again and never will.

[uwe]

"Splatagated" - I just learned a new word. Who said mounting Aussie content in this forum isn't good for the education of us all?

[ack1961]

Steve, if you know Alice then you will know of Katherine. I grew up there. Big cattle country and yes I remember those road trains. Buntine roadways I think was the biggest company. I've crossed the Nullabor plain 3 times, once at night. Its basically the longest straight stretch of road in the world. Roughly a thousand Kms of treeless salt bush in the middle bottom of the country between Adelaide and Perth. The only way to do it at night in a car is to find a road train going slow enough to sit behind or pay the penalty. It was totally surreal, like one of those weird 70's outback thriller movies. The amount of blood and guts splatagated on the road was just amazing. I distinctly remember sitting behind a triple trailer truck pulling 1 metre diameter pipes and struggling to keep with him doing 145kph. The other trucks were going faster. Anyway I remember seeing on the road at one stage a double red sillouette  in the shape of 2 kangaroos slightly overlapping just before a slight barump! I never drove it at night again and never will.

Yeah, night driving in the vast wilderness of the outback is serious stuff. Between the animals, the road trains and the vastness, it's a pretty scary.  If you go anywhere from Alice it's a hike. 17 hours to Adelaide (one of the prettiest cities in the world), and 15 hours to Darwin. The wildlife between Katherine & Darwin is scary...big Kakadu stuff. I remember not seeing a water-buffalo right on the shoulder of the road (at sunrise) that wasn't 10 feet from my truck.  Thing weighs a ton and they're that blue-grey color. That would have been the end of me and my fishing buddy.
I know Katherine a little bit. I've played in baseball tourneys up there as well as in Tennant Creek.  When we'd go fishing in Darwin (Mandorah Bay), we'd stop by Katherine...very nice, down-to-Earth people there (just like most places in the NT).
It's funny; we used to hear this report all the time on the radio: "fire danger is high in the Barkly Region". We used to laugh because we never really understood what it meant...until you drive through the Barkly Region, and even parts of the road are on fire.  Crazy place, the NT. Anytime you fish in a place where crocs eat the sharks, you know it's nuts.

I was just chatting with a friend of mine who was in Alice when I was there...we laughed because that was almost 20 years ago, and it seems like yesterday.  I miss it - not the blow flies, however.

cheers,
Steve

[Aussie Mark]

In the old days before laminated windscreens I hit a kangaroo at 60mph at night that's then come straight through the windscreen still alive and ended up in the back seat, kicking the crap out of the passengers there.  You've never seen 4 guys get out of a car faster.

[OldManC]

Mark, that sounds like something you'd see in a movie and laugh at because you know it would never happen in real life... I wish there were a video camera running on that scene. I'd love to see it!

[Aussie Mark]

George, I hear you, but the guys in the back seat sure weren't laughing much - kangaroos have extremely powerful hind legs with sharp "toes"

[Freuds_Cat]

All that power in those legs and a brain the size of a small walnut. "GTF" outta here would have been my only thoughts