• Country

Cycling in Australia: Dangerous Animals and Treacherous… Fruit?

By Adam Marsal

Forget all strange Australian road signs alerting drivers to peculiar animals that are about to jump out of the bush directly under your front wheel.

It’s not all the kangaroos, emus, crocodiles, or koalas that would frighten the hell out of you. Now, there’s much more serious danger lurking on the roads in some parts of Australia – ripe mango fruits.

As seen by the road in the appropriately named part of the Mango Hill in the northern Queensland, a skidding bicycle appeared on a street sign warning from the danger of an accident caused by cunning Mother Nature.

Behind the sign, there’s apparently well-grown and mischievous mango tree preparing munitions for unwary cyclists. Anyone who has ever skidded on a bike would agree that soft and slimy structures represent an ultimate risk of a potential injury.

We need more signs like this in Europe too: week-old pizza slices, dead hedgehog bodies, horse poop, flattened lizards…