Transcription Audio

Hello and welcome. Picture this: rainforest air thick as soup, licuala fan palms rattling overhead, and me whispering before I even realized I was speaking—backpacks in front, tree between you and her, do not run. Ten meters ahead, a cassowary hen lifted her head, black as polished basalt, two fluff-ball chicks at her feet, and she let out a boom so low it made the palms tremble. We were on Djiru Country near Mission Beach, late dry season—chicks on the ground, parents on edge. I had a small tourism team on the Licuala Fan Palm walk for a practical drill: how to handle wildlife encounters when they stop being theory and start being real. We’d done the classroom work that morning—dynamic risk assessment, species-specific buffers, the don’t feed, don’t corner, don’t run fundamentals. It’s meant to be boring. Boring saves lives. I’ve spent the last decade building and auditing wildlife risk protocols across Queensland and the Territory. The pattern is constant: teams that practice boring checklists have excitingly few incidents. It’s not magic; it’s muscle memory. Our pre-brief was tight: toolbox talk, roles assigned—Mia on front-watch, Tom on rear-watch, me floating—radio check, first aid kit with pressure immobilization bandages, vinegar in the pack because coastal habits die hard. And we’d agreed on our shorthand: Stop, Assess, Buffer, Exit, Report. Stop moving. Assess the animal, your people, terrain. Buffer means create space and barriers. Exit is the clean retreat. Report to Parks or your operator log. Simple on paper, incredibly effective when adrenaline spikes. Here’s the thing most people miss: that pre-walk routine isn’t bureaucracy. It’s your parachute. Serious incidents happen to groups without clear roles and comms, or to people who knew better and skipped steps because they were rushing. And that brings me to my first mistake. I didn’t walk the loop five minutes ahead to check for fresh sign. I let the clock push me into the efficiency trap. If I’d looked, the signs were obvious: fresh three-toed tracks in last night’s drizzle, black palm fruits bitten open, scrapes where a cassowary had been feeding. Cassowaries run on patterns, especially with kids in tow. A quick scout would have told me we were in a family corridor. We came around a blind bend and there she was, centered on the track. Mia froze. Tom muttered, “She’s massive,” and stepped straight back into a lawyer vine. I dropped my palm—slow down, control your body. “Backpacks in front,” I said quietly. “We’re backing out. No eye contact. Watch your footing.” The chicks peeped. The hen fluffed, dropped her head, and took a few heavy, deliberate steps. She wanted a clear corridor for her family. Cassowary threat language is a masterclass in clarity: head low to show the casque, wings slightly out, that chesty boom that rolls through rainforest like a bass note. It’s a broadcast: I’m here. Move. We did what Queensland guidance asks: put a solid object between you and the bird—trees are your best mates in cassowary country. Move back slowly. Backpacks up as shields. Don’t turn your back. Don’t run. I asked Tom to keep talking, calm and even. Consistent mammal noise often keeps mammals predictable. Even tone equals even movement. And then I made my second mistake. I said, “Make yourself look big.” That’s for dingoes. With cassowaries, presence and clarity matter. Challenge doesn’t. She kicked a dead stump so hard bark flew like confetti. In that crack I heard the exact reminder I needed. I corrected: “Not big—just steady. Keep it steady.” She turned, shouldered the chicks into the palms, boomed once more, and it was done. The air smelled like crushed ferns and adrenaline. That kick into the stump was a displacement move—a way to bleed off defensive energy without escalating. It’s a good sign, but a sobering one. Those claws are not theatre props. People get seriously hurt when they crowd, corner, or teach a wild bird that humans equal food. When we’d put a ridge of buttress roots between us and the family, we debriefed while the shakes faded. What worked? Pre-briefed roles, slow movement, hard barriers. What didn’t? My language, and the speed we carried into a blind bend. The rainforest had just set our curriculum. So let me distill the protocol I teach for cassowaries, and it maps nicely to other wildlife with a few tweaks. First, prevention does the heavy lifting. Most negative encounters trace back to food conditioning—not just illegal hand-feeding but bins without lids, fruit left out, or dogs flushing birds off food. A wild bird that doesn’t see humans as a food ticket will usually choose space over conflict. Your most powerful safety tools are the boring ones: secure your food and waste, leave the fruit where it falls, no dogs in cassowary habitat, and never feed wildlife. Operators: hammer that message in your briefings and on your vehicles. Visitors: make it your personal code. Second, the universal protocol—Stop, Assess, Buffer, Exit, Report. Stop the moment you spot the animal. Assess behavior, your people, the terrain. Chicks? Dogs? Easy barriers? Buffer by getting something solid between you and the bird; give space without turning your back. Exit by backing away on the cleanest track. No sudden moves, no running, no crowding. Report to Parks or your operator network with location and behavior, especially if chicks are present or the bird seems food-conditioned. Your intel helps the next group and supports management. Third, species specifics. Cassowaries: steady beats big. Group tight, kids in the middle, backpacks forward. Talk softly and move as one. Dingoes: stance and size can deter—face the animal, look tall, don’t run. Snakes: freeze, eyes on the snake, then step back slowly once you know where it is. Magpies in spring: give the nest tree a wide berth, avoid eye contact during a swoop. Crocodiles in the north: strict distance from the water’s edge, especially dawn, dusk, night—no exceptions. Know your species and adjust. One-size-fits-all is where people get hurt. Now, fieldcraft. Scout blind bends when you can. Read the ground—tracks, fresh scat, fruit piles, scratch marks. Listen for that low boom—unmistakable once you know it. Keep group spacing tight in narrow country so you behave like a single unit, not a string of separate problems. Assign front and rear watchers every single time, even on short walks. And calibrate your pace to the habitat: when the canopy closes and the track pinches, slow down and raise your attention. There’s also the human piece. We love schedules. We love efficiency. But the bush doesn’t care about your timetable. The shortcut—skipping the scout, rushing the brief—is exactly the one you’ll wish you hadn’t. Build habits you can lean on under stress. Practice them when nothing is happening so they’re there when everything is. And when it’s over? Exit clean and report. Log the encounter with time, place, behavior, numbers of animals, what you did, what worked, what didn’t. Share that with your team and neighbors. Good reporting turns one group’s near miss into another group’s prevention, and builds the case for better infrastructure—signage, boardwalks, dog control—where it’s needed. Let me circle back to that hen. We didn’t need heroics. We needed a tree, a plan, and a calm voice. Wildlife has jobs to do—feed, breed, defend—and if we read their language and give them options, they’ll usually take the lowest-cost path away from us. Our job is to be the easy problem, not the hard one. If you’re guiding, make your briefings human and practical. Explain why you’ll ask for quiet on blind corners, why backpacks come off the shoulders and onto the chest in cassowary country, why food stays sealed, why dogs stay at home. If you’re a visitor, take that seriously. You’re not only protecting yourself—you’re keeping wild animals wild. And if you remember only one line from this episode, make it the one I heard myself say in the heat of the moment: backpacks in front, tree between you and her, do not run. It’s a simple sentence packed with a lot of science and a lot of respect. Thanks for spending this time with me in the wet tropics. If this conversation helps you have a safer, calmer, more respectful encounter out there, that’s a win for you and a win for the wildlife. Stay curious, stay humble, and I’ll see you on the track.