Australia has just over twenty species of goanna (aka monitor lizard) but if anyone talks about seeing ‘a goanna’ they usually mean the largest local species. In our case, that’s the Lace Monitor, Varanus varius, which happens to be the second-largest in the country. (The Perentie of the central deserts is a little larger, growing to 2.4m as against the Lace Monitor’s 2.1m.)
The normal colour scheme of our Lace Monitors (I’m simply going to call them ‘goannas’ from here on) is dull grey-black with a generous spattering of creamy spots, as in my photographs of goannas at Wallaman Falls, on Whitehaven Beach and in the hills above Mission Beach (scroll down each page for the pics).
When we saw this reptile crossing the back yard of a weekender on Hervey’s Range we were surprised enough to check the reference books. It was close to two metres from nose to tail, so there weren’t many possibilities.
This strongly-banded sand-and-charcoal goanna is, in fact, still Varanus varius, although the ‘Lace’ name doesn’t suit it very well at all. It is known as ‘Bell’s form’ or ‘Bell’s phase’ and is more common in the drier inland than on the coast.
The Hervey’s Range property is just on the inland side of the crest of the range, although with a higher rainfall than regions further West, so a Bell’s form goanna is not too far out of its normal territory. That said, Wikipedia has one from the Fraser Coast (Hervey Bay – Maryborough) in its Lace Monitor gallery, so the geographical separation can’t be too strict.
Here’s a Bell’s form goanna I saw recently at Broadwater camping ground near Abergowrie, where the annual rainfall is nearly two metres and the natural vegetation is rainforest. One of the iNaturalist experts commented that he thinks the Bell’s form occurs right across the range of the species. https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations/89437317