Snapper Island, within the Hope Islands National Park, is a popular destination for camping, fishing and birdwatching.<\/p>\n
‘Sad little eyes’<\/p>\n
A regular visitor to the island, Ms Miller said the first sign of the bovines was a frightening, loud noise “crashing down the hill” as she sat on the island’s southern shores.<\/p>\n
“Gave me quite a fright and all I could think of was that it was a pig or a human coming from the other side of the island and then it just disappeared,” she said.<\/p>\n
As she was leaving, however, she spotted the “sad little eyes” of a brown Brahman peering at her from the top of a ridge.<\/p>\n
“I guess because that one was just staring at us as if, ‘Why are you leaving me here?’ we were definitely compelled to go back and help it.”<\/p>\n
Using the supplies she had, Ms Miller headed towards the cow with 4 litres of water and some food when she saw another one emerge from the trees.<\/p>\n
“I could see ear tags on them, but I couldn’t see their brand,” she said.<\/p>\n
“We go out there fairly regularly and yet to think that they’ve been there that whole time and no-one’s noticed or heard [them].”<\/p>\n
![\"Aerial](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/592aa49be8cc8283814948689f13639e.jpeg\")
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Snapper Island is only a nautical mile south-east of Cape Kimberley. (Flickr<\/a> CC BY-NC 2.0<\/a>: Shek Graham<\/a>)<\/p>\n Authorities try to find owners<\/p>\n In a statement, Queensland’s environment department said it was trying to track down the cows’ owners.<\/p>\n Ms Miller said while the cattle appeared healthy, she left water and molasses at the island on Monday.<\/p>\n Despite trying to track the animals for nearly an hour around the 66-hectare island, in the hope of getting a photo of their brands, she didn’t spot them again.<\/p>\n “But we saw lots of signs of life \u2014 well-trodden down grass and lots and lots of cow poo,” she said.<\/p>\n She said the cows may be tucked up high in the forest near a freshwater source.<\/p>\n “You could tell by the amount of pooing and trampling down that they’re quite successfully eating and drinking up there and fortunately we’ve had a wet year so there’ll be more water and more grass,” she said.<\/p>\n Ms Miller said the cattle had probably survived a flood, crocodile-inhabited waters and seven months marooned on an island but extracting them from the remote location may be difficult.<\/p>\n Snapper Island is a popular camping, fishing and birdwatching destination. (Supplied: Jayne Miller)<\/p>\n “It sounds like you need a barge-style vessel to retrieve the cows,” she said.<\/p>\n “They’re not in a readily accessible area. You’d probably need to have a bit of cattle knowledge to lure them to somewhere where you’d be able to retrieve them.”<\/p>\n She said it was comforting that the cows had each other for company.<\/p>\n “When there was just one, we felt so sorry for it,” Ms Miller said.<\/p>\n “But then when another one came through, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s so much better’.<\/p>\n “At least they’ve got each other to experience this whole thing together.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two cows have made a life for themselves on a tropical island in Far North Queensland, several months…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643618,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[315541,11405,79504,273,14986,19876,315543,111,139,69,315542,147,315544,315545],"class_list":["post-643617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-brahman","tag-cattle","tag-cows","tag-environment","tag-far-north-queensland","tag-flooding","tag-hope-islands-national-park","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-queensland-parks-and-wildlife-service","tag-science","tag-snapper-island","tag-tropical-island"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/9dd8b1034c162cbbf78a110d7339f9f8.jpeg\")
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