Marsupial encounter

I had completely forgotten to include in my Mission Beach post about my latest marsupial encounter. As Lisa and I drove down the dark, winding road toward Mission Beach, with eyes pealed for cassowaries, our headlights picked up a small animal sitting in the middle of the road that looked like this. Neither of us was sure what it was, but it was about the size of a cat and in our path. Following our wildlife instructions, we braked but did not swerve to miss the animal. And we safely missed it.

Rabbit? Must have been. We continued, then we saw another one. This one even scurried across the road, then gave a good hop into the bush. Couldn't be a rabbit, it has small ears.

Once at Mission Beach, we read that both bandicoots and pademelons are common to those parts and upon the advice of the "Wildlife of Far North Queensland" volume that we found in the long house, we determined it was a bandicoot. (Pademelons look like tiny kangaroos - definitely not what we saw, since we didn't notice the tail) Not quite as exciting or majestic as a cassowary, but still genuine Australia fauna nonetheless.