Australian Roadsigns: A Collection

At the end of last week’s article about Brisbane’s record hot summer, I said I would let you know how I got on with the sale of my house.

Yes, well spotted, that’s not my house, this is…

Let’s recap on my Moving House in Australia story, and then bring it right up to date.

• On Saturday, 19 November, after much haggling, we agreed a price on a house we wanted to buy
• On Monday the 21st, after returning from our Weekend on the Gold Coast, we signed a 90 day settlement contract, so our moving in day for the new house was 20 February 2017
• We still owned our old house, we hadn’t even put it on the market to sell it at that stage, in fact we needed to do some decorating before that could happen
• Decorating was completed early December and we had our first ‘open day’ on Saturday, 7 December.
• Nothing much happened throughout the quiet Christmas and New Year period, but things perked up in January and combined with a reduction in price, more interest was being shown
• On Saturday, 28 January, four groups of potential buyers viewed the property, and on the Monday we received our first offer.
• After some more haggling, and 52 days after going to market, we sold our house with a 30 day settlement contract that same day, Monday, 30 January.
• On 1 March, just nine days after moving into our new home, we collected the money for the sale of our old house. So it is no longer ‘is my house’ as mentioned earlier, it is now ‘was my house’.

So the scary bridging loan I mentioned in one of the previous articles lasted less than two weeks. Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together like that?

There is far more to this story of buying and selling a house in Australia, so much so that I have already written a couple of articles about it for Australia and New Zealand magazine, and I plan to do a third next week. All three articles will be reprinted here very soon.

For now though, here’s a magazine article that appeared in their Winter edition, I called it Road trips, they didn’t.

Wild encounters

We’ve probably all seen those roadside signs warning us to beware of kangaroos running across the road. It’s diamond-shaped, has a yellow background and a picture of a kangaroo skipping, as they do.

Hitting a kangaroo on the road is quite rare, but it does happen from time to time. When it does, and it’s normally around either dawn or dusk, it can cause a serious amount of damage to your car. It doesn’t do the kangaroo much good either.

On a recent Queensland road trip I saw lots of these kinds of signs, and it’s not just kangaroos that we have to look out for. Australia’s rural roads may often be straight with no other cars in sight, but that doesn’t mean you can relax. It seems we have an enviable selection of beasts that can suddenly appear in front of your car at any given moment.

I found this hugely entertaining as I headed north along the Bruce Highway. Whenever I saw one of those diamond-shaped yellow signs in the distance, I would wonder what kind of animal I might encounter next. It was like driving through an Aussie safari park.

We have more kangaroos living in Australia than humans, so it was no surprise to find it was the most common animal warning sign. Even so, no kangaroos crossed my path during the 5000 km trip. I saw plenty of warning signs for koalas as well, as you would expect, but none were seen let alone harmed during my journey.

I was also warned about wombats, deer, emus and cassowaries.

No sightings of any of those either, whether in the road or not.

I have seen signs close to where I live warning me to beware of equestrians; it’s a picture of a horse with a rider on it. On this road trip though, I saw pictures of horses that were riderless.

Yes, we have to look out for wild horses as well. We call them brumbies and we have at least 400,000 of them here in Australia. As you would expect though, I didn’t see a sign asking me to beware of camels. After all, that would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it? Not really, Australia has around 1 million wild camels, but they hang out in the outback in central Australia.

Heading for the beaches just isn’t their thing. Well, maybe.

By now you are probably thinking this is a pretty poor safari park by anybody’s standards, but I can tell you I did see two animals crossing the road. What’s really interesting is I didn’t see a single sign anywhere along my journey warning me about the first.

As I drove around some country roads just north of Port Douglas, a squealing pig ran across the road. This animal probably should have signs; we apparently have over 23 million feral pigs roaming around Australia.

The second animal was a rather large cow who was taking no chances; she was crossing the road right underneath her very own cattle warning sign. She even posed for a picture.

My favourite warning sign though doesn’t feature an animal at all. It’s the one with a picture of large boulders falling down the side of a steep hill. Thanks for the heads up, but I’m not sure how much it helps.

….

That’s the end of the article, but now I need to apologise to Daisy…

I now know you are not really a cow, you are a bull. James told me in the comments on my page Townsville Heading Towards Cardwell. No wonder you gave me such a strange look. Sorry geezer, I live in the city, what can I say?