Mysterious find in Woolworths car park wall sparks Aussie dad's rescue mission
A Woolworths shopper was mystified by a discovery in a supermarket car park on Monday night. Chris Williams was unloading his groceries into the boot of his car when he noticed something inside a hole smashed in the wall.
'My wife sent me down for bread and milk,' the Sydney dad told Yahoo News. 'I was steadying the trolley against the wall, and then inside one of the fist-sized holes, I saw a reptile sleeping. I genuinely had to do a double take, I didn't expect that at all.'
While most customers hurrying to get home from the West Ryde shopping centre car park wouldn't have known how to respond, as luck would have it, Williams is a reptile expert. Not only is he the founder of Urban Reptile Removal, he's the president of the Australian Herpetological Society.
Of course, Williams was immediately able to identify the species that was sleeping soundly in the hole as an Australian native water dragon. Because darkness had fallen, the animal had its eyes closed and was easy to rescue.
'He was sound asleep in that cavity. I was able to squeeze my hand through and grab him by the back of the head,' Williams said.
'But he came to life much more enthusiastically than I expected him to. So for a minute, I was a bit concerned he was going to wriggle out from under my fingers and disappear into the cavity.'
The lizard was found deep within the ground-level car park — a dangerous place for a lizard to be. With the shopping centre surrounded by houses, roads and very little green space, Williams admits to being stumped by where he may have come from.
'I still haven't come up with any logical reason,' he said. 'He looks in really good condition, but I don't know how long he'd been there for."
While snakes often end up in shopping centres after hitching rides in cars, Williams believes this behaviour would be less likely with a water dragon.
📸 Aussie property owner's moment of 'terror' after discovery on trail camera
🦎 Rare animal hiding in outback photo helps solve decades-long mystery
🏡 Secret hidden beneath Australia's 'most important' parcel of land
He thinks the animal is wild rather than an escaped pet, because unlike bearded dragons, water dragons don't do well in captivity.
Despite the weather getting cooler, water dragons are still active during the day and haven't entered long-term brumation, a state of dormancy similar to hibernation. Williams is now on a mission to find a place to release the dragon that's nicer than the West Ryde car park.
'I'll spend today finding somewhere nice for him to go. He'll be fine. He'll work it out,' he said.
Love Australia's weird and wonderful environment? 🐊🦘😳 Get our new newsletter showcasing the week's best stories.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Yahoo
The moment I knew: as I signed the waiver for his emergency brain surgery, I felt pure devotion
In 2022, I was going through motions. I was burned out after shepherding two restaurants through Melbourne's Covid lockdowns and emotionally burned to the ground by a failed marriage. It had been a big few years; I had sworn off love and was taking life slowly. Despite all this, in late spring I found myself chatting online with a charming gardener-cum-physicist called Scott. A few weeks later, our first phone call lasted until the sun came up. I had been captivated by his boundless capacity for a chat but I didn't hear from him for a few weeks after that. I wondered if it was because I'd asked him on more than one occasion to pipe down so I could contribute to the conversation, or if my cynical side had made an unflattering appearance in my wine haze. Related: The moment I knew: I'd had lots of lovers during our open relationship – then I realised I could trust him with my life But no love was lost, Scott reappeared a few weeks later and we recommenced our correspondence with vigour. On New Year's Day 2023 I invited him over. It was another all-nighter of nonstop chatting and we talked at length about the dire state of my garden. A couple of weeks later he showed up completely unannounced, secateurs in hand, ready to tackle it. What I've learned about Scott since is that his love language is very much 'acts of service'. He is so happy to help anyone with their annoying tasks; he just loves being helpful. But of course my first encounter with his knight-in-shining-armour routine made me feel very special indeed. Unfortunately, in my shame, I'd already paid someone to get my yard in shape (not that I admitted the outsourcing to him). Impressed by the work I hadn't done and hellbent on making himself useful, Scott decided he'd clean out the gutters. We got up on the roof and worked together – Scott doing the dirty work and me climbing up and down the ladder with the bucket. Sharing this mundane task was an unexpected bonding experience. We'd later talk about how seen and safe we felt in each other's company that day. It's gone down in the annals of our relationship as 'Gutter Day'. He moved in about six months later. I couldn't believe myself, the dainty goth courting a gruff tradesman. I began working at a bar and we continued to livestream our thoughts via text while he was at home and I flirted with strangers and upsold wanky wines. Just a few weeks later, in late June, I came home to find Scott sleeping. We'd always chat over a nightcap together before retiring, so this was unusual. But he'd been working hard so I didn't worry too much until the following day. When he was still drowsy the next evening, something felt off. I called our neighbour Michelle, an emergency nurse, who suggested we go to hospital. By the time we arrived Scott was struggling to string a sentence together and was whisked away within moments of being triaged. When they wheeled him back post-MRI, he was soft, tired and looking so vulnerable. Then the news came that Scott had a 1.1cm subarachnoid aneurysm on his brain that had been haemorrhaging for maybe 24 hours. I went as white as a sheet but it quickly became apparent that I was going to have to save my emotional breakdown for later, step up, contact his family (whom I'd never met) and make some extremely high-stakes decisions about his treatment path. It was then and there, as I was confronted with the idea that I might lose him, that I knew I could not be without him. As I nervously signed the waiver, I felt pure devotion. Related: The moment I knew: I worried he was a playboy, then a friend reassured me Scott's surgery went well but he was placed in an induced coma for a few days. When he came to he had zero filter. That rawness could have revealed a darker side but instead I got confirmation that even at his most uncensored, Scott is kind and caring to the core. One of his most vivid hallucinations, which he told me about in detail, involved him spending the entire night helping the nurses catch up on their paperwork. Scott came home two months later and, while his recovery wasn't without its frustrations and challenges, the mere thought of being anywhere else didn't cross my mind. Of course there were days I could have slept in the garden in a tent just to get a break from his incessant chatting but I knew I would never, ever leave him. He was my guy, no matter how many times I had to repeat myself, or listen to him repeat himself! Two years on, Scott has pretty much fully recovered and is still the same gorgeous dork I fell in love with. We spend our days pottering in the garden, or at the stove, or by the fire on cold nights. The dark days seem like another life but they weren't – they were just the beginning of ours.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Push for major change on Aussie tourist island after 25 years: 'Once-in-a-generation'
Just off the coast of Brisbane's north lies Bribie Island, a 34km stretch of land that has seen a rapid transformation in recent years. With its pristine beaches, growing population and rising property values, the island has become a hotspot not just for tourists, but for investors and sea-changers alike. Yet, tucked away from the beaches, shops and golf courses is a huge pine plantation that takes up nearly 20 per cent of the island. It's been a working forest for decades, but it's also sitting on land that would be worth millions on today's market. For the first time in 25 years, the trees are about to be harvested — and that's opened the door for a different conversation. Many locals are calling for change. Rather than replanting rows and rows of introduced pines, they want to bring back native forests and parklands to "restore the heart" of the island. And with the harvest beginning in July, they feel like this could be a "once-in-a-generation" opportunity to restore the land before more pines are planted and a new cycle begins. "This is the best opportunity that we'll have to negotiate a better outcome for the environment," Richard Ogden, president of the Bribie Island Environmental Protection Association Inc (BIEPA), told Yahoo News. "Bribie is really trying to step up and do what's necessary to protect and conserve nature for future generations." BIEPA say the plantation is impacting the natural landscape of the island in several ways: Inadequate control of feral pigs with the plantation Drifting herbicide damaging native vegetation Pine 'wildlings' invading other areas of parklands Fears of pollution from fertiliser Big trucks loaded with logs could damage the Bribie Island Bridge Several weeks ago, HQPlantations (HQP) sent a letter to residents advising of the upcoming harvest. The population has grown by more than 50 per cent since the last harvest took place, with BIEPA fearing that some new residents may not even be aware that industrial forestry operates on the island. In a new statement on their website, HQP said they have modified their plans to minimise impacts to residents and road users. The pines will be harvested over the next 10 years at a rate of approximately 100 hectares per year. While HQP didn't respond to Yahoo's questions about future plans for the land, it confirmed in the statement that it would be replanting pine seedlings in accordance with its licensing. The company has a 99-year lease with the state government that began in 2010. HQP manages 310,000 hectares of plantation forests across NSW and Far North Queensland, planting up to 10 million seedlings annually. The Bribie Island site consists of 2,500 hectares of sustainably grown timber. Richard and his fellow volunteers at BIEPA understand that HQP are running a business and is not breaking any laws, but they feel that the goal of a restored forest can still be achieved. "What we'd like is for the state government to turn that back to a national park over time, but the only way that they (HQP) would probably agree to that is if the state government makes available an equivalent amount of land on the mainland," Richard said. "We do like to see the plantation operators as neighbours and companions, and we like to see ourselves as valuable community partners. "We're coming at it from a point of view of, obviously, conserving nature for the future and putting Bribie's nature first. But we also understand that there's a commercial imperative, and we have observed that there are very real perspectives on this, that it could very well be in the economic best interests in the future to move the plantations from Bribie. "But as we understand, it's probably going to take a number of years. It could be a decade or even two decades before that actually became complete." A spokesperson for the Department of Primary Industries said the plantation is essential to supply timber for the housing market. "A sustainable local timber supply is required to manage the growing demand for housing and meet the Queensland Government's commitment of constructing one million homes by 2044," they said. "Converting this plantation area to another use would require a change to the underlying State Forest tenure, and a compensation payment to HQP, which has a 99-year lease agreement. Further enquiries regarding plantation-harvesting operations on Bribie Island should be directed to HQP." The City of Moreton Bay said it is committed to "protecting and enhancing its natural areas and wildlife habitats". "While these activities are a matter for the Queensland Government, Council remains focused on 'Going Green as we Grow', playing its role in managing and protecting its natural areas while planning for urban growth," a spokesperson said. The council's Environment and Sustainability Strategy 2042 aims to maintain the region's current native vegetation cover of 42 per cent, with a view to increasing it over time. "Council also has a Land Buyback for Environmental Purposes Program to acquire, restore and rehabilitate land across the City to conserve ecological communities and wildlife habitats for the benefit of our communities," the spokesperson said. On June 24, HQP is holding a community drop-in session for anyone looking for more information about the upcoming work. Find those details here. Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@ You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
Is seat 11A the safest on a plane? Experts weigh in after Air India tragedy
The miraculous survival of a passenger who escaped moments after his Air India flight crashed, killing all others on board, has sparked debate over whether his seat, 11A, is the safest on a plane. However, aviation experts say that determining the safest seat is not so simple, as aircraft configurations vary significantly and survival usually depends on a complex combination of factors. "Each accident is different, and it is impossible to predict survivability based on seat location," Mitchell Fox, a director at the Flight Safety Foundation, a US-based nonprofit, said. Ramesh Viswash Kumar, who was seated in 11A, recounted how his proximity to an emergency exit on the London-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner that crashed on Thursday allowed him to walk to safety. Sitting next to an exit door may increase a person's chances of survival in a crash. However, experts say that the specific seat number, such as 11A, is not universally the safest, as aircraft can have numerous different layouts. 'In this particular instance, because the passenger was sitting adjacent to the emergency exit, this was obviously the safest seat on the day,' Ron Bartsch, chairman at Sydney-based AvLaw Aviation Consulting, said. "But it's not always 11A, it's just 11A on this configuration of the Boeing 787." A Popular Mechanics study of crashes since 1971, published in 2007, found that passengers seated towards the back of the plane had better survival odds. Some experts also suggest the wing section offers more stability. Sitting next to an exit door, like Mr Kumar, gives you an opportunity to be one of the first out of the plane, although some exits do not function after a crash. The opposite side of the plane was blocked by the wall of a building it crashed into, he said. In January 2024, a panel missing several bolts blew off the side of a Boeing 737 MAX mid-flight, creating a gaping hole and damaging the adjacent seat. Fortunately, no one was seated there at the time, and the incident resulted in no fatalities. Sitting by the aisle might offer you a speedier escape but it increases the likelihood of being hit in the head by luggage falling out of the overhead bins, which is a much more common occurrence than major crashes. Paying attention to the safety briefing at the start of your flight – often dismissed as routine – is likely the best way to improve your chances of survival, experts say. Disciplined compliance with cabin crew evacuation advice, including leaving bags behind, was a key factor in saving the lives of all 379 passengers and crew aboard a Japan Airlines flight in January 2024. The Airbus A350 aircraft had collided with a Coast Guard plane at Tokyo's Haneda Airport, killing five of the six crew members on the smaller aircraft. Safety briefings typically cover critical instructions such as how to fasten your seatbelt securely, adopt the correct brace position and plan your evacuation route. A common tip is to count the number of rows between your seat and the nearest exit - vital knowledge if the cabin fills with smoke and visibility is low. Despite disasters such as the Air India crash, plane designs have evolved to increase the likelihood of passengers walking away from a rare plane accident, Mr Fox said. These include floor path lighting, fire detection and extinguishers, less flammable cabin materials and improved access to emergency exits. "There have been remarkable advancements in airplane cabin design that have improved the survivability of accidents on or near the ground," Mr Fox said.
