From the official Snake Tales page.
So I think it is safe to assume that the Flying Doc is happily flying along, and then passes a tree and realizes he’s upside down. Hilarity ensues.
flying doctors a set of real doctors that fly around the world treating people for free. It just looks like they did a little ‘tree surgery’…
Lance’s interpretation looks spot on - it’s one of those comic strips where you need to know the characters to get the humour - for example, the main character is a snake who has no friends, and spends most of his time looking depressed sitting on rock, while his ‘friends’ (a kangaroo, etc) make ‘walking’ jokes (it gets less funny the more you think about it). He also is the eternal ‘loser in love’, lusting after ‘Lady Snake’, who constantly puts him down.
Posting this sort of lameness to an international forum like SDMB is practically defamation of the national Australian character (our political cartoonists are better than our ‘funnies’).
HenrySpencer.
No no no. That thing in the tree is obviously a cow tool.
I think it looks like a face in the (so called koala’s) Back with two arms at its side…then again i could be wrong…
Yes, but posting that picture of the four cute guys can only be good for your national reputation.
That’s supposed to be a koala!!! Where are you people getting this? I was thinking maybe some owl-based item perhaps, or maybe a beehive. Koala never entered into it…
I’m with Erroneous. Seems like the whole thing is based on “Cow Tools”.
By the way, Melbourne’s other paper, The Age, has quite possibly the worst selection of comic strips in the history of newspaper funnies.
Not a one of them have an ounce of humour in them. Fred Bassett is a good example of a comic that has never even tried to be funny. And the rest of them are worse.
Unbelievable.
PigeonMan would blow them out of the water, and I ain’t exaggeratin’ for effect.
Fred Bassett aint in The Age.
Otherwise, I agree. Surely it is time to kill Bristow.
On the other hand the editorial cartoons are superb.
picmr
I have to concur with Erroneous and Smeghead. It’s clearly a cow tool, or a variation thereupon.
The only impression I get is that no-one actually gets the humour in this. Rather than racking our brains trying to figure out why it is funny, why not just use Occam’s razor and agree that it’s just not funny?
What is a “cow tool”?
“Cow tools” was a Far Side comic by Gary Larson. The humour was based on the fact that Larson finds cows intrinsically funny on their own. (He even finds the word “cow” funny!) Unfortunately, most of the rest of the world doesn’t and deluged him with letters asking for the joke to be explained.
If it’s a koala, what’s it doing in a pine tree? I thought they only like eucalyptus (eucalypti?).
It looks to me like the tree has a beehive on it, not a koala. And, with the branches (which suggest arms), the tree suggests a person hiding behind it. Shame on the Flying Doc for not watching where he’s going. 
It looks as if he is flying upside down (look at the tree) and just nipped the tree with his propeller…cutting a kind of gnawed up section through it…barely missed flying straight into it…hmmmm…looks at it upside down
koala? where?
He is cartoonist, not a comic.
HANDY, if you post just to nitpick, you can’t blame people like me from following you and pointing out he’s a cartoonist.
I’m telling you people it’s an upside down koala from behind. Not a well drawn one, but it is a koala.
LUNA, is it a headless koala? With no legs? Because that’s what it looks like. To say it’s not well drawn is an understatement, considering we can’t even agree on what it is. (Notice I’m not saying you’re necessarily wrong.)
MADHATTER, the best thing about the page is the picture of you. You’re far too young for me, but cute as a bug’s ear nonetheless. 