General News
20 May, 2025
No tickets on this cassowary
IT would seem Elvis hasn’t left the building.
The well-known cassowary paid a visit to police while they were carrying out a traffic operation on the Cairns side of the Barron River last week.
“I know Elvis, I’ve seen him before, but not this close,” Senior Constable Dallas Trembath, who is with the Herberton Highway Patrol, said.
“We’d been there for about an hour, and he had crossed the highway with his girlfriend further down, and then about 10 minutes later he literally walked right up between us.”
It was an easy snap for SC Trembath - Elvis passed by Herberton Police Constable Brian Nolan – and he wasn’t speeding.
“It was actually pretty cool, I escorted him back across the road.”
For SC Trembath, a cassowary sighting is always a great moment. He has spotted them on top of the Gillies Range and lower down on the Palmerston Range.
“But they’re hard to see, we have problems,” he warned. “They are so black, the community really needs to stay alert on these roads.”
The police team stationed near Kuranda was made up of officers from Herberton, Mareeba and Cairns. They were carrying out Operation Whiskey Boost, a state-wide drug and alcohol testing blitz that launched a month ago and is expected to continue “for a month or two”.
The four-hour RBT and drug testing on Monday morning, 12 May, was conducted simultaneously at every designated site across Queensland and was coordinated from Brisbane.
