This video was posted a few years ago and I am surprised that I never came across it. Channel 7 filmed a Scottish reporter being tricked into believing that dropbears were dangerous and menacing.

Yeah it's amazing how many overseas people think that dropbears are real, hiding in trees waiting to fall onto the unwary who happen to pass below.

Yes the dreaded 'dropbears' ploy. Some 50 years ago when I was in the Army we used to warn the visiting Yanks troops about them and con the visiting Kiwi troops about the snakes that hid behind every tree in the scrub. That then had both lots of troops well distracted which made our job much easier..

Merry Christmas to all, Andrew

There was a very funny commercial for Bundaberg rum that featured dropbears. Large white ones of course.

Hi Brad, seasons greet and thanks for maintaining the site.
Yes, the Scottish lass, what a catch!
I liked the way her eyes change size in proportion to the inferred threat.
And a great sport too when the penny..err..dropped!
Great bit of Aussie humour and no one hurt or insulted unlike some of the so called "comedy" acts I don't watch on TV.
Fred.

I actually had one fall on the roof of a van I was driving between Bathurst and Hill End one night. It must have been spooked by the noise and my high beams and become disoriented. Fortunately it, and the van, were okay and it soon clambered back up the tree from whence it fell. Don't ask me how it survived, it must have landed in the middle of the roof, where there'd be some bounce. I'll never forget the thud.

Crazy critters absolutely no road sense, used to work permanent night shift & on other occasions have almost run them down. They have a bad habit of walking into the middle of the road; stopping; and then going back the way they came.

Similar logic as you only being able to walk into the middle of a forest: After that your walking out of the forest.

Well you know that, because of the way they digest gum leaves, they go around permanently pissed....

It's true! Look it up.

Explains a bit

Sounds like around here with a different type of pissed: Principally off.

This months edition of third world Australia (Cactus Chronicles would be apt. as the place is.)

Back to the 90's: State Government sent us broke yet again; It will likely take a century to pay the dept off.

Governments & citycentric are doing an Ostrich & not facing the fact that the rising rural road toll is directly proportional to the roads literally falling apart and the patches put on them also falling apart, compounded by importing cars with wheels, tyres & suspensions, unsuited to rural roads.

This phone fiasco has all come to a head in the last few weeks. Brothers priority phone is on Wireless NBN. Power outage- no phone; no redundancy. This is topped of by when it was a landline (which they are trying to push onto NBN) had a fault Telstra could not fix so they put it on NBN.

My landline has an electric fence getting into it and its almost impossible to even contact them to get to them to fix it (not my units they're off). It and several others around the place (common tower) has NBN modem scanning getting in the phone & they have no idea as to what it is yet alone fix it.

Showing up the citycentric designers of these rant about apps as being on another planet. In a recent fire, with the useless mobile signal, the phones are flat out running apps. So, no one got any fire warning unless smelling smoke, or seeing it out of the window as they were next to it. My mobile connects 3G to a tower 40Km away

Welcome to the fourth world.

My mobile connects 3G to a tower 40km away...

Until the 30th June, 2024, then Telstra turns 3G off, which means unless your phone is VOLTE-compatible (Voice over 4G), it won't make phone calls anymore because non-5G phones default to 3G for phone calls and only use 4G for data.

Optus turns 3G off in September I think and Vodafone's 3G will be gone by January I think.

I have the last Windows phone ever made - the HP Elite X3 and it was released before 5G was a thing so this programme spells the end of an otherwise perfect phone. I will shift to Android before the deadline - reluctantly.

One good thing about being a dropbear (or a koala) means not having to worry about whether a phone will work or not.

Back to the origin of the drop bear.
The drop bear fable was invented by the Telecom Team I worked with in Canberra in 1985.
There was a Chinese visiting technician who was going bushwalking in the future. The name drop bear was adopted from the telecom transmision towers which have the big drums ( Bearers ) on them ( two facing one way and two facing in the exact opposite direction and one below the other. The lower drum was for inclement weather as the bad weather would literally drop the transmission down to the lower bearer hence the name drop bearer which for the Chinese tech was shortened to "Drop Bear" .
The techs had him really scared of these small cuddly Drop Bears dropping from the trees and literally eating his brains lol.
And this is where it all started.

I am not sure about that, Carl. When I was in the cub scouts in the late 1970s we had the frighteners put on us by one of the pack leaders who decided to tell us about dropbears when we were on a night time hike between the pub and the Scout Association property at Windeyer in the Central West. And of course, the gravel road we were walking down at the time was covered in gum trees.

Somehow, when it is dark, the legend seems a bit more scarier.

There's two challenges here:-

1. Finding out how old the dropbear myth/legend really is.
2. Convincing foreigners that the daytime version is called a koala and not a koala bear. Whilst they do look like a bear, they are marsupials and as such, not related.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut3m1n4uJgk

Stories of koala like creatures dropping on their prey were around in the 1930's and certainly were used to scare visiting US military during WW II in the 40's. The name drop bear, as far as I know, didn't appear until the early 1980's, but may have been earlier.
Harold

I can't help wondering if we would have been as fearful of Bigfoot or Slenderman if Australian soldiers were in the US at the same time. Many countries have mythical creatures lurking and even we have Bunyips and Yowies although they don't seem to attract the same amount of attention as dropbears.