TheBanyanTree: Wild life

[PJMoney]

One dingo.  That was west of Halls Creek.  I was surprised to see it.  I
thought they were smarter.  But then, it didn't look fully grown.  

There were three snakes.  The first was huge; maybe 8 to 10 feet long.  It
was west of Timber Creek and stretched from the gravel verge half way across
the lane and then looped right back to the verge.  It had a brown back
turning to gold along the sides and a white belly.  A King Brown?  

Out of Kununurra we came across a much smaller snake the colour of sweet
corn.  It was coiled on the side of the road. The last snake we saw was on
the road to Fitzroy Crossing.  It was pearl grey and lying in a lazy S
across the lane.

There were half a dozen cows on the stretch between Halls Creek and Derby
and between Timber Creek and the Roebuck Roadhouse there were maybe twenty
odd assorted kangaroos and wallabies.  For some odd reason the sight of
their poor broken bodies saddened me in a way the rest of the road kill did
not.

As we approached Katherine, and again as we left it, I was expecting to see
at least some squashed cane toads on the road but there were none.  Too bad.

What really surprised me was that on the road, driving the 1856km, we saw
almost no living wildlife out there apart from the kites and hawks that were
making a meal of the road kill.  One solitary kangaroo was all we saw, even
though parts of the Kimberley are open grasslands that stretch to the
horizon and even though the food and water around was obviously enough to
sustain herds of cattle.  When we came down the Barkly Highway out of
Queensland ten years ago we saw lots of living as well as dead wildlife.  In
particular we saw large herds of emus and many, many big eagles.  I don't
know what to make of it.

Janice