Python eats wallaby on Australian golf course

A routine round of golf has taken a uniquely Australian turn with stunned players finding a giant python wrestling with a wallaby on a fairway.Robert Willemse was on the 17th hole at the Paradise Palms course in Cairns in north Queensland last Saturday when he heard that a four-metre scrub python was gorging on the native marsupial nearby."It had (the wallaby) in a vice-like grip and it was swallowing it," Willemse, who regularly plays at the course, told AFP, having halted his game to take a look.He snapped photos of the encounter before heading back to finish his round. "I heard later on... as other golfers and staff members came out to have a look at it, that it did actually succeed in swallowing it all and then it rolled into a dry creek nearby and slithered away into the bush, probably to digest its rather large meal," he said."There's a lot of wildlife in the tropical north," Willemse added, noting that wallabies, which resemble a smaller version of kangaroos, were a common sight on the fairways, although snakes were not.Willemse said the scrub python -- Australia's largest snake which can grow to 8.5 metres long -- was likely to have dropped onto the unsuspecting wallaby from a tree."The snake would never have been able to catch the wallaby in the open like where it was eating it," he said."It looked like it might have dropped out of a tree, got a hold of (the wallaby), then there was a bit of a struggle and it rolled into the middle of the fairway."