Gwynnie is delighted to have successfully retrieved an eagle feather from the roadside for her hat
Like any grey nomad, a woman travelling Australia alone needs to have an adventurous spirit and to learn to expect the unexpected. Just ask Gwynnie Cahill, who stopped to pick up an eagle feather in the Outback … and ended up running for dear life with a pair of charging feral pigs hot on her heels.
It was a day that started like any other for the 64-year-old who has been travelling the highways and byways for the past nine months in the 1996 Toyota Hilux 4X4 with slide-on camper combo she calls ‘Beauty & the Beast’.
After spending a hot and humid night in the Mathison Bush camp just southwest of Katherine in the Northern Territory, the lone adventurer hit the open road bright and early. She was travelling along slowly and carefully when she saw some large swooping birds in the distance.
“When I got closer I saw a dead eagle was part of the roadkill,” said Gwynnie. “The most likely scenario was that it had come down to feed on the dead wallaby already on the road and, being heavy and slow, it probably got ‘collected’ by another vehicle.” Not being one to let an opportunity pass by, Gwynnie parked well off the road and walked back to the roadkill to claim a feather for her hat. And that’s when things got interesting.
“I was standing there looking down when loud snorting, squealing and grunts alerted me to oncoming danger,” she said. “I looked up quickly and saw two large wild pigs charging towards me at a rate of knots … they were obviously keen to clean up the roadkill they thought I was about to take from them.”
Despite everything, the fashion-conscious traveller still snatched up the prized eagle feather off the ground before making a hasty retreat. “With ‘wind beneath my wings’ I bolted back to the safety of my vehicle … and just in time,” she said. “I reckon I very narrowly missed becoming part of the early morning feast.”
But if Gwynnie thought that that was the end of her wildlife worries, she had another think coming.
Not long afterwards, she was driving near Curtin Springs opposite Mount Connor in the NT when a big rogue camel came racing down the road towards her.
“Thinking he would dash off the road when he noticed me I slowed up and tentatively kept driving,” said Gwynnie. “But with legs swinging and mouth foaming he spotted my car and, as I looked back over my shoulder after passing him, I saw the camel getting up a gallop towards me!”
By now though, Gwynnie was a dab hand at escaping from angry mammals.
“Accelerating to ‘WARP’ speed I drove off finally managing to leave that crazy camel behind me!” she said. “Phew!” Somewhat surprisingly, it seems that Gwynnie’s close encounters have simply whetted her appetite for further excitement.
“I grew up in a large family around Mt. Hope and Bourke so I am a country girl at heart with a love for adventure and the Great Outdoors,” she said. “My immediate plans are to buy a metal detector and have a hand at ‘gold and gem fossicking’ and, of course, always going fishing where possible.”
And with a can-do attitude and so many grey nomads with the same outlook on life as herself, travelling alone is not really a problem. “I have made so many new friends on the road that I am never really alone,” she said.
Oh, and the eagle feather looks great in her hat!
• Have you had any crazy encounters with wildlife? Comment below
Some years ago just north of Tennant Creek at night a young man in a nice car came across donkeys on the road that did not want to move. So being brave the young man nudged the rear of one donkey with his car…the donkey made a noise of disapproval and smashed the front of his car with his rear legs. Broke a headlight and car body damage Funny now but not at the time. Some things you never forget..
Well done Gywinnie – bet that got your pulse rate up !! May see you out there on the road as we travel around the countryside- stay safe and continue having fun –
Pulled up one day at a caravan park in WA when we heard a voice say ‘g’day, how are you going?’ Mystified because we could see no-one around, it turned out to be a magpie sitting on the fence next to where we were camping..had a great laugh and thought that was one for the album.
Just returned from a fantastic road trip to Birdsville and back, encountered many birds and wildlife, but nothing as funny as 2 racing Emu’s running flat out across the road just ahead of me and a young beautiful Brahma Bull with his herd of females alongside the road, as I approached slowly on the far side of the road the bull took solid stance to charge but I kept moving faster and he had to break stance and ended up skipping along side me with one wild kick as his last act of defiance, last I saw of him was he standing in the middle of the road in my rear vision camera looking like the famous line “WTF was that” I have the last part on my iPad video taken courtesy of my Sister In Law in the back seat..