On a recent Goulburn River camping trip, one visitor to the campsite was familiar: a large, long goanna, or Lace Monitor.
He checked out the cold campfire and the garbage bag, but was disappointed in our vegetarian scraps.
Fruit peelings and limp lettuce leaves just can’t compete with chop bones or pie crusts.
Spotting us, he headed up the nearest tree and splayed himself like a brooch across its broad trunk. He is so long it is hard to fit him in the camera lens: the bone-pale tip of his tail is cut off.
He doesn’t like my close clicking and moves higher up the tree.
He must greet the holiday season with very mixed reactions: possibilities of interesting tucker, but what nuisances people are, never minding their own business, always staring, pointing, exclaiming, clicking, forcing him up trees when he has work to do!
