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| Outta my way! |
Here's an example of an Australian pick up (or Ute as they're called here) fitted with bull bars - actually they're for stopping kangaroos splaying themselves across the windscreen. I've mentioned the damage that roos can cause - when you realise that the largest red kangaroos can be up to 2 metres tall you'll realise what I 'm talking about.
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| A Wingle? In Australia? You gotta be joking! |
Most of the traffic in the outback consists of road trains, utes and enormous SUV's and a vehicle without roo bars is a rarity. Most of these are Toyotas and Nissans with a fair number of Fords and Holdens but increasing numbers of other manufacturers are getting in on the act - this picture features the Great Wall Wingle. The Chinese introduced this to Australia but quickly renamed it the Great Wall Steed! We were being driven round in a relatively rare VW Amarok which is rather a posh ute but works better than most. The trend for big cars even extends to bigger versions of our car back home which is a Mazda CX5 - here they market the CX9 which is a good 20 inches longer - wouldn't fit in our drive!
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| Hurry, hurry! |
If you take a closer look at this photo you can see two emu chicks by the feet of this adult emu. We were tanking along at 70 mph and my camera was on my lap, they were bang in the middle of the road. Surprisingly quickly they trotted off to the side and I was lucky to get a picture before they reached the long grass. Not seen any crocs on the road but we have had two sightings of echidnas crossing the tarmac. Echidnas and platypuses are the only mammals that lay eggs but echidnas live on land, they have pouches and their young are called 'puggles'! The ones that we saw are the short nosed variety, about a foot and a half long they have spikes rather like those of a porcupine. In each case we managed to see the rear end of them as they respectively 1. buried itself under a fallen tree and 2. disappeared into the long grass. So here's a photo I found on the glorious internet:
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| Am I pointing in the right direction? |
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