One of the great things about taking a roadtrip in a campervan is the ability to stop wherever pleases you for however long you feel like it because there is no set time to check into a hotel or any other kind of schedules. As a result, you might find yourself stopping for a quick snack bread or just to admire the scenery and find stuff like, oh I don’t know, teddy bears hanging from trees in the middle of nowhere in Australia.

Cute? Creepy? I’m not entirely sure. But photo-worthy either way, I reckoned. These photos weren’t even all taken on the same piece of road – we actually drove between each of them. The whole idea behind these bears on trees remains a mystery to me. Upon returning to this side of the Tasman, I spent more time than I’d like to admit searching for the reasoning behind this. Strangely, the internet hasn’t been able to solve the mystery for me.

This forum thread was the closest I could get to an answer. This Wikipedia entry about Kings Highway mentions the bears in the “notable features and landmarks” section but offers no explanation (except maybe an implicit relationship between the bears and the nearby “Pooh Bear’s Corner”, a small rock cave near the top of the Clyde Mountain pass. The bears are also mentioned here. Other than that, I found zero. nada.

Teddy bear spotting along deserted roads has all the ingredients to be a fun activity but I’d really like to know why there are dozens of these along this particular Australian road. Do you know?