Almost Murdered By a Kangaroo!
Originally posted May 14, 2016
The title of this blog sounds scary, and it certainly was a bit scary…but also one of the wildest things I’ve ever witnessed! On April 16th, Nate and I did “The Great Ocean Bike Ride,” a 145K (about 90 miles) ride that starts in the surf town of Torquay, winds up into the mountains inland, and then back down the mountain side down to the ocean and loops back along the ocean road. I vaguely recalled that the last time I trained for and biked 90 miles that it hurt quite a bit. Without training, this was quite a painful experience! After about 3 hours of riding, my upper legs were just aching and felt like they were on fire as we pulled into the aid station. Then I looked up and was delighted too see massive boxes of cake – Nate and I each ate 4 pieces of cake, some Tasmanian apples and bananas. I’m pretty sure nothing ever tasted so good. After that point began the “mountain section” of the race and it started to downpour as we got above the clouds. I should have eaten six pieces of cake…
Anyway, back to the kangaroo murder. The first couple hours of the ride went through beautiful and slightly poop-smelling farm country – open fields and rolling hills as far as the eye could see. We did the race with another couple and the wife was riding ahead with me while the guys followed. Behind us, I heard Nate’s voice yell, “Hey, watch out!” By the time I looked up, all I saw was this massive brown kangaroo in the air in front of me. I braked hard and saw him touch down in the center line of the road, only to pounce back up into the air, clearing the remainder of the road as well as the fence on the side of the road and go bounding off into the field. Holy crap, I’ve never seen anything like that before! I kept thinking how neat it was until our friend pointed out that if I was riding about 3 seconds faster, that thing could have killed me (not quite as cool…) I like to think I would have just been injured, but what an awkward way to go that would have been. Wow. So that, followed by cake, were the highlights of the day, for sure! The whole ride with some stops here and there took about 7 hours. I must say, we certainly needed our hot tub that night! This is one feature of our rental property we use quite regularly and have decided, without question, that when we return to the states, we’ll be purchasing a hot tub for our house there.
Not too “hop” around too much, but I have to share one of my favorite photos of living here so far while on the topic of kangaroos. Isla absolutely loves animals – her first word after mom and dad was dog, which she pronounces, “GOG” with quite a bit of emphasis on the initial “g.” I take her to our local dog park almost every day where she runs as fast as she can, pointing and yelling “Gog, Gog, Gog!” I am keenly aware I am the only person who A. Brings a small child to a dog park and B. Did not bring a dog to the dog park, so I occasionally call out a fake dog’s name (“Hey, Dinosaur, come!) and look around as if I just can’t believe my dog has run off again, and sometimes I have light conversations with the actual dog owners, some of whom now know Isla by name.
Anyway, the girl loves animals, so we were ecstatic with the amount of wildlife running around when we went to Wilson’s Promontory, a national park at the southernmost tip of Australia. There were enormous emus running around, some wombats, wallabies, and kangaroos everywhere you turned while hiking. It wasn’t until this trip that we realized Isla thinks all furry animals are dogs. We watched the really fat gog crossing the road (a wombat) and Isla was certainly faster than him, so we had to hold her back! Then we went bushwalking (I think this is mostly just the term for hiking here) and there were tons of kangaroos hopping, eating, etc. The below photo was taken when Isla had an absolute melt down because we wouldn’t let her pet the wild “gog” behind her. Poor baby…first we made you move to another country away from all your friends and now this!
Anyway, back to the kangaroo murder. The first couple hours of the ride went through beautiful and slightly poop-smelling farm country – open fields and rolling hills as far as the eye could see. We did the race with another couple and the wife was riding ahead with me while the guys followed. Behind us, I heard Nate’s voice yell, “Hey, watch out!” By the time I looked up, all I saw was this massive brown kangaroo in the air in front of me. I braked hard and saw him touch down in the center line of the road, only to pounce back up into the air, clearing the remainder of the road as well as the fence on the side of the road and go bounding off into the field. Holy crap, I’ve never seen anything like that before! I kept thinking how neat it was until our friend pointed out that if I was riding about 3 seconds faster, that thing could have killed me (not quite as cool…) I like to think I would have just been injured, but what an awkward way to go that would have been. Wow. So that, followed by cake, were the highlights of the day, for sure! The whole ride with some stops here and there took about 7 hours. I must say, we certainly needed our hot tub that night! This is one feature of our rental property we use quite regularly and have decided, without question, that when we return to the states, we’ll be purchasing a hot tub for our house there.
Not too “hop” around too much, but I have to share one of my favorite photos of living here so far while on the topic of kangaroos. Isla absolutely loves animals – her first word after mom and dad was dog, which she pronounces, “GOG” with quite a bit of emphasis on the initial “g.” I take her to our local dog park almost every day where she runs as fast as she can, pointing and yelling “Gog, Gog, Gog!” I am keenly aware I am the only person who A. Brings a small child to a dog park and B. Did not bring a dog to the dog park, so I occasionally call out a fake dog’s name (“Hey, Dinosaur, come!) and look around as if I just can’t believe my dog has run off again, and sometimes I have light conversations with the actual dog owners, some of whom now know Isla by name.
Anyway, the girl loves animals, so we were ecstatic with the amount of wildlife running around when we went to Wilson’s Promontory, a national park at the southernmost tip of Australia. There were enormous emus running around, some wombats, wallabies, and kangaroos everywhere you turned while hiking. It wasn’t until this trip that we realized Isla thinks all furry animals are dogs. We watched the really fat gog crossing the road (a wombat) and Isla was certainly faster than him, so we had to hold her back! Then we went bushwalking (I think this is mostly just the term for hiking here) and there were tons of kangaroos hopping, eating, etc. The below photo was taken when Isla had an absolute melt down because we wouldn’t let her pet the wild “gog” behind her. Poor baby…first we made you move to another country away from all your friends and now this!
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