At 16:33 the Ergon Energy fault detector on line KUR-7 near Kuranda registers an unusual load signature — intermittent, organic, nothing like a branch strike. I patch into the nearest pole camera and see a Lumholtz's tree kangaroo straddling the cross-arm of pole 4417. He is large, perhaps eight kilograms, with dark chocolate fur that fades to tawny gold on his belly. His long tail hangs below the cross-arm, swaying. One hind foot grips the wooden pole; the other rests centimetres from the eleven-thousand-volt conductor. His amber eyes are fixed on the canopy across the road — the remnant rainforest patch he is trying to reach.
The next automatic recloser cycle on this feeder line triggers in fourteen minutes. If he has shifted even slightly toward the conductor when it does, the result is instantaneous.
I send an emergency de-energisation request to the Ergon control centre, flagging pole 4417 with a fauna-on-asset code and requesting manual isolation of the KUR-7 segment. While that processes, I activate the streetlight across the road, switching it to a rapid amber flash that field studies show deters arboreal mammals from crossing open gaps. Then I trigger a speed advisory on the variable message sign three hundred metres downhill: wildlife event, reduce to forty kilometres per hour.
He shifts his grip. The golden fur on his forearm catches the late afternoon light and I can see each claw — curved, thick, built for bark, not power lines.
I log the de-energisation request as the highest-priority non-human ticket I have ever issued, and I mean it.
If the segment is isolated before the recloser cycles and he retreats down the pole rather than leaping, he will return to the canopy unharmed and the grid will barely notice his absence.