Kang-- bloody---roos

BK added this 'tid bit' to another thread, thought it needed a thread of it's own.

as posted by BK

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She's lucky you had a float on, they come out in bigger bits with an ordinary trailer on, had a few cars "tuck" in behind me when I did Mt Isa every week and roo's don't break up like sheep do, they didn't last long.....would have been better on their own at 60 kph then following me at 100.

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end quote.


Ah yes, kanga--bloody--roos, what an amazing animal, oh, and what bloody stupid animal too.


Driving for another mob and had a Scania R111 with a big steel bulbar up front, excellent protection when required with this thing fitted, far better than them plasticy alloy bits of fluff.

Mt Isa was the destination for the load, I had taken all day to load this lot of PUSS onto the trailer, headed for home to get me port. There was no great rush to get this load to the Isa at all, just be there Monday to unload.
Get home and find out it's the start of school holidays, the kids had been pestering me for years, to take them on a trip. Eldest one starts begging to go, so, onto the phone and get hold the boss, he say's OK, so we are away that evening.

First night's camp is just short of Roma, next night it's just out the other side of Longreach, up on top of the rise about 10 klicks out of town, no mossies way out up here and well of the road, a good camping spot actually.

Bladder gets me up well before sun-up, so, lets get going then, out onto the highway and wind it up once more, hadn't gone far at all, when a mob of about a dozen roos were spotted, they were crossing the highway from the western side and heading in an easterly direction, dodged that mob OK. A bit further on and another mob is crossing the road, hmm, there must have been a 'biggish shower of rain' over to the east of the highway and all the roos from miles around, who had got a sniff of this rain, were on the move for better tucker, going to be very interesting driving now.

Well, from then on, it's just mob after mob, wave after wave, with no let up at all, like wall to wall roo's, never knew there so many of these things and never saw anything like it before. So many, I got sick and tired of lifting the load pedal, just kept pushing through all this mobile mountain of flesh.
My daughter had started to count, just how many of these idiot roos, managed to run into the bulbar, gee, lot's and lot's of them were real careless.

This mayhem keeps up until daylight and I'm approaching McKinley, come over that last easy rise and looking down at the water tank at McKinley, when there's another big roo off to the left, no worries, just another to add to the score that my daughter had been keeping.

Well, this big 'bugga' doesn't just keep low like all the others had, as he's going across the road, nope, he can see properly now, so this idiot has to start bounding across the road. Now when you hit a roo and he's scrambling across the tar keeping low, then no worries, he's going under, with no damage to you at all.

When an idiot 'roo' decides to bound across the road, he's now likely to be UP in the air when you pluck him with the bullbar. That's exactly what happened to this roo, kill number '36' for the morning, mashed him around big time, but he got his revenge on the right hand headlight assembly, kind of made a mess of that lot.

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Do you know, what that was going to cost, for a complete headlight assembly for a Scania R111 ?

regards greenie [smiley=vrolijk_1.gif]

Don't like them when they're UP.
Wife hit one in the old jigger on our dirt road, only at about 50kph but as it was up, it smashed one headlight then the bonnet, windscreen and on over the roof.
Bloody thing got up and kept on going.
Later on I had a mob decide to cross the road so I stopped completely.
One brainless animal then just bashed into the side of the car, another nice big dint.
Rifle time.

I don't know how useful this technology will be.
Too sensitive?
Is the braking (particularly for a vehicle which could jacknife) worse than the collision?
Kangaroos come at last second, already in the headlamp range: will the detector act too late?
I have hit only one, and it bounced off the radiator, didn't come through the windscreen, and didn't damage my Holden HK.
I have also braked often to avoid others.

Cattle are also a problem in outback Queensland, probably in other states; camels may well be a problem in places.
I was being given a lift cross country by a friend in northern Sweden, and he commented that he had to be vigilant for reindeer and elk.

Roderick B Smith
Rail News Victoria Editor

Hmmmmm, seems that

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YOU

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and Volvo, are about 20 to 30 years far too late.


Do a google on an item called Shoo-Roo, it might at least bring

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YOU, up to speed on todays technology.



regards greenie [smiley=vrolijk_1.gif]

That jogged memories.
The main website isn't working just now.
This one has some claims:
< www.4wdworld.com.au/Shu-Roo.html> ;
IIRC the equipment was fitted to the dmu which CountryLink (renamed now, from Mon.1.7.13) uses for its Broken Hill service (it goes to Griffith too). That set is the only one in the fleet to be fitted with bullbars.
Has anyone here used ShuRoo, and can comment on the effectiveness?
It could simply be a 'come in sucker' device which does nothing. It might deliver an authentic kangaroo love call (like an authentic camel love call), and attract them. It could be a brilliant deterrent. Who knows?

Roderick B Smith
Rail News Victoria Editor

G'day I have one fitted to my ute and can only say I have not hit a roo yet
Mine is on a switch so I only turn it on in known roo areas but I have done 50+k kms 99% country running at the worst times and so far so good


Jon

2002 after some good rains out in Western Queensland saw a roo explosion out there.

Toyota LandCruiser ute with an ARB bullbar and Warn winch .... left Jackson Oilfield Camp at 2:00am heading toward Thargominda ..... lost count at 50 hits and not even half way through the trip.

1999 tucker for the roos was that scarce they were eating tree bark .... couldn't even jump they were that bad.

Worse one was hitting a pig that one of Mansells clobbered and spat out the rear out near Cooladdie (Fox Trap Hotel). Scrubbed out both front tires between there and Charleville. > > >

Couple of years ago I had to do a daylight run to Longreach and to stop the boardum started counting dead roos on the side of the road .
The average was 160 to the kilometer.From Alpha going west.That was what could be seen ,probably missed 40 to the K.

Hey Grumpy, what do you do with the pig? Drop him back at the station? LOL

I know a guy who had a Shoo-roo, he hadn't hit one all day out near Injune It got dark and then remembered he hadn't turned the shoo-roo thingy on, within a half hour both headlights were gone from hits. He reckons it should be called a rootractor.

Have also seen and used those little things you put on the front of the car and as you drive the air blows through them. -- Bleedin useless too,- the poor little roo hit the front of the car right in the area of the gizmo and we found out later the gizmo had broken off.

We reckoned it was probably stuck in the ear of the little wallaby and he kept gettin the whistling noise as he was bounding along.