Diamond Creek has a large variety of native birds living in our increasing number of trees. Possums also live in the trees and use the power wires as pathways in their nocturnal travelling. Snakes have also learnt to live with us. Red bellied black snakes for instance live in the blackberries at the Union gold mine site and are always ‘ready to give a cheerio to the adventurous lads that explore this area.
A couple of years ago my wife Nancy had a chat with a kangaroo inspecting the backyard in our Haley Street home. We found its tracks in our bushy front garden where it had enjoyed breakfast.
Kangaroos are residents in Kangaroo Ground and Yarrambat and have even hopped along Main Street, Greensborough. Eighteen months ago a friend killed a kangaroo as she drove around the Saw Pit Gully Roundabout.
All these native animals are common in our valley but on the night of May 2, we were returning from Nancy’s birthday dinner, after 11.00 pm, along Ryans Road, north of Allendale Road. The glare of our lights picked up an animal on our side of the road eating a pizza. How did we know that? It was eating from a discarded pizza box and this four legged animal looked different.
It was about 4 foot long from snout to thick tail, looked like a big bandicoot, not dog like, and it had spots. It totally ignored passing cars as it nibbled its tasty find.
As soon as we arrived home, I drew a childish impression of the beast and wrote down all little bits of remembered features.
Without any further research we knew it looked like a quoll. Visiting the Conservation Department in Victoria Parade I asked for the X Files department. The fauna expert photocopied my drawing for the “sightings” file and agreed it could have been a tiger quoll.
He went on to tell us that tiger quolls are in the outer suburbs and being carnivorous they enjoy poultry as well as pizzas. One angry outer suburban chicken farmer stabbed a night marauder amongst his chooks with a pitch fork. It was a tiger quoll.
One night a housewife at Ringwood was collecting her backyard washing and saw an unworried intruder amble in her back door, wander through the house to the lounge room and go to sleep under her lounge chair!
The next day the Department picked up a tiger quoll and took him to the Healesville Sanctuary for a three month holiday before release.
The rangers at our Plenty Gorge Park in Gordons Lane have not sighted any quolls in the area – probably because of the lack of Pizza Huts!
Next time you drive at night watch out for tigers in our valley and if you see one, report it to the Department of Conservation.
Kevin (2011)
