side trips: mt coot-tha

One weekend i climbed up to mt coot-tha west of Brisbane to check out the sights and the wildlife. Concerned that i might trip on the mountainside i drove up instead.

On the mountain I met some wildlife - a group of good-looking Filipino picnickers. They were however a bit shy and didn’t like their photos taken so i let them be. But then i invited myself to join them when they served out food. They said i was welcome as long as i did not post their pictures.


The locals at mt coot-tha are very friendly. This lovely couple are cooks – they’re called cook-a-burras. Though they were eating out when we met them. They actually shared with our picnic. They didn’t wait to be invited too. They just helped themselves to some juicy fried chicken plucked straight from one of the girls’ hands. Apparently birds of a feather flock together but inter-fowl cannibalism is allowed. Isn’t that fowl play?

Another local on the prowl for some snacks is this goanna. It was a huge lizard. It asked for the hand of one of the ladies (I could have sworn she’s from Kiangan). However this lady happened to be married and wasn’t too keen on getting her hand kissed er licked by the lizard. So being the brave katipuneros i think my group is, we battled away with loud shouts and shoos until we prevailed with a bit of help from our weapons of twigs and stomping boots. The vanquished lizard slithered away with its tail tucked away between its legs. Another time and another place its jaw would be adorning some family’s gong handle.

This young kookie watched all the action quietly. As the battle raged between whooping pinoys and one giant intimidating lizard, it just took everything in. Maybe it was a spy for some human welfare society and would have reported the lizard if it kept bullying us and wrestled our food. The goanna probably learned not to proposition pretty filipinas. Had it done so, it would’ve been picked on not by the females but by the males of the species and ended up as adobe-o to go with the tin ola or pinpicked pickedcan - the toucan if we could find it, not the kookie.