ADAM LANGENBERG, REPORTER: Just outside Hobart a popular visitor is back in town.

INSTAGRAM:  Neil will go to the beach when Neil wants to go to the f***ing beach. 

REPORTER:  This is Neil, a 2200-pound southern elephant seal that has become a local icon in Tasmania. 

VOX POP:  We all love him and he’s the best. 

VOX POP:  I’ve seen him yawn a few times and that made my day, 

ADAM LANGENBERG:  Neil the seal makes twice yearly visits to the same part of southern Tasmania. When he’s not napping, he’s cuddling traffic cones or smashing up road signs often leaving a trail of destruction in his path. 

CLIVE MCMAHON, SYDNEY INSTITUTE OF MARINE SCIENCE:  He’s in a difficult position, because he has all these innate behaviours and wants to spar and play and develop his skills and in the absence of other seals he’s having to do this with traffic cones and bollards and large things that stand up that look like seals.

GOPRI:  People are kind of attached to him and want to see how he’s doing every year, and he’s getting bigger every year.

ADAM LANGENBERG: Gopri started filming after Neil interrupted a recent drive. The video he posted to Instagram has had more than a million views.

GOPRI:  I think it’s just a one time thing. I just posted it randomly and it has just gone viral. 

ADAM LANGENBERG: Trish was travelling on the mainland. She booked a one-day trip to Hobart after seeing Neil’s videos. 

TRISH:  I got here at 6.30 this morning and was lucky enough that he just happened to be here right away, because I was willing to walk up and down the beach in the hopes that I’d find him. 

ADAM LANGENBERG:  But with fame, there can be danger. 

KRIS CARLYON, TAS. DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT:  He weighs 1000 kilos and if you’re in the wrong place there’s a big big risk. 

ADAM LANGENBERG:  Kris Carlyon has been in charge of ensuring Neil’s safety since the seal was born on the Tasman peninsula in 2020. Scientists think his mother got separated from her colony and gave birth there by accident. 

KRIS CARLYON: Elephant seals are preprogrammed to return to where they were born. 

As he matures he’ll get bigger and bigger, and we expect him to top out at around about 3 tonne in weight and about 4 and a half metres in length, so think about your average Hilux size ute. 

ADAM LANGENBERG:  In 2022 a 600 kilogram walrus named Freya was deemed a public safety risk and euthanized by Norwegian authorities less than a month after she started flopping on boats 

But if humans here keep their distance, the main danger Neil poses is to local infrastructure

CLIVE MCMAHON:  It’s unfortunate of course that some of the things that he’s interacting with are being broken or destroyed, but I think it’s a small price to pay for having the privilege of have such a unique animal in a capital city really.