A velociraptor stolen from The Big Pineapple Music Festival in 2014 has mysteriously reappeared on top of Mount Coolum.
Two Sunshine Coast women strangely chanced upon the 1.5 metre tall lizard while hiking to the top of the crag, but that’s not even the most bizarre part of the story.
Attached to the raptor was a note, presumably written by the original dino-nappers, requesting that the Clever Girl be returned to her rightful owners.
“I have seen and been through some shit,” the note reads. “Dog fights, cage fights, chicken fights, horse races, dog races and emu races.
“Return me to Big Pineapple to my owner.”
Image: Madison Bothe / Supplied
And it seems the raptor has indeed been through some shit, as it was found missing both an eye and a tail. However, the tail was apparently lost on the night of the original theft.
As Big Pineapple Music Festival director Mark Pico tells the ABC, the velociraptor was part of a collection brought in for the event, two years ago.
It was left on stage overnight and was filched in the early hours of the morning, but the tail, it seems, was left behind.
“Just like Cinderella and the slipper, wasn’t it?” Pico says, adding, “It would’ve taken a couple of guys to walk 40 minutes to get it up the top of Mount Coolum — it’s crazy.”
Meanwhile, the two women who made the (pre)historic discovery, Madison Bothe and Julia Blake, have also dished more info about their Jurassic lark at Mount Coolum.
“[The note] said that it needed to go back to its home at the Big Pineapple … so we thought it might’ve been a joke but then we googled it and to our surprise it came up that the dinosaur had actually been stolen from the Big Pineapple Music Festival in 2014,” Bothe tells the ABC, explaining that upon realising that the reptile was stolen the women proceeded to call the police, who apparently found the whole thing very amusing.
The ladies then carried their new Jurassic bro back down the mountain, and transported it to Coolum police station.
“At first they thought it was a bit of a joke and were looking at us quite dumbfounded again and so after that we said, ‘We’ll actually prove to you that we have a dinosaur in our car,'” Bothe says.
“Two police officers came out and had a look and were just laughing so hard.”
Image: Police Sunshine Coast
Sergeant Ben Cox from the Coolum Police Station has confirmed it was an unusual day at the office.
“I wasn’t aware of it at the time but a few of the boys at the station positioned it at the entry door so when I walked in, you’re face high with a dinosaur,” he says. “We come across some unusual things, but this was one of the more unusual.”
The discovery will no doubt be lauded as a big win for dinosaur conservationists, who until now believed the prehistoric lizards to be extinct on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast after the last of their kind, a T-Rex, perished in a great fire at billionaire Clive Palmer’s Coolum resort (Coolum is a bit of a dino hotspot, apparently).
No word on whether the raptor will make a return to The Big Pineapple Music Festival in 2017. Only time will tell.
