It was hot and dry and I had just avoided a Red-bellied Black snake on the path to the Double Creek Inlet. I heard a hiss and to my right was a metre and a half long dinosaur sitting in a tree head height only a few feet away. I walked back a bit and took a few photos. You will see these large reptiles on most visits to Mallacoota. They can be quite passive if left alone and great to photograph. This was one of the largest Lace Monitors that I have seen and he did not budge when I squeezed past to keep walking along the path…he probably thought he could take me, probably right too.
Lace Monitor, Double Creek Inlet, Mallacoota, Vic
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The Gap Year and Beyond 
Beautiful captures of the Lace Monitor Malt. They can be scary when you find them on the track. We got a shock at Flinders Chase NP, when it was overgrown, well before it disappeared last month, when we came around a bend in a track and there it is with its head down a hole, and suddenly it turns and we are right in its face.
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Thanks Ash
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These are super, Malt! What a fascinating creature, and wonderfully captured!
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Thanks Peter
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Wonderful. I’ve never seen one of these in the wild but they seem to be much more common than I realised, people see them everywhere. It is possible they were there but I failed to see them, which is even more worrying. Coming across one unexpectedly would be … disturbing …
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its not too bad Sue, the little ones scamper off and the larger ones climb a tree or jump into the water. The big one I saw was probably not quite warmed up yet so did not move too much, though he did give me the stink eye.
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Yikes, even the picture made me nervous!!!
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