Deadliest of all
I LEARNED from a British expat living in the USA, that there are more things in Australia that can kill you than any other place in the world.
The knowledge came to me about 15 years ago when I was reading Bill Bryson’s ‘Down Under’ travelogue about the country I was born in, grew up in and have lived in all my life.
In fact, I came to the conclusion that the entertaining travel writer knew more about ‘my sunburnt country’ than I did – lots more.
Perhaps that is to do with my age. History and social studies in primary and secondary school focused heavily on European happenings, particularly British happenings, with a rare sidebar into our explorers, who were, in most part, European.
Geography also had an international flavour and even so long after World War II, the emphasis was on the geographical make up of our allies and to a much smaller degree, our own country.
I do remember standing to attention every morning in our small country primary school and reciting with other students in Years 4 to 7 all the train stations along the main State routes. Hard to forget but it certainly stuck with me, as nowadays I use the recitation of the train stations as a party trick.
But back to my awakening, via the pages of Bill Bryson’s travelogue, that there are more things that can kill you in this country than anywhere else.
I remember thinking that it couldn’t be true – what about the rainforests of the Amazon … the African savannahs … but no, Bryson had it right.
What I found most amazing is that I had lived in this land all my life and had never tallied up the number of deadly critters and plants, insects and fungi etc that were in striking distance.
Could I have lived the rest of my life without that knowledge – the answer is “Quite Happily!”.
Perhaps that is an overstatement. I don’t think it has made any difference to how I act or how I go about my life.
I guess living in Australia we become inured to the dangers – we know they are there and most times are quite sensible about avoiding them.
And where would we be if we didn’t have the odd ‘almost got bit by a snake’ story in our repertoire to terrify people who are just visiting the country from lands shunned by the slithering reptiles?
After all, if we have to live and survive in a country full of deadly things we may as well boast about it.
To paraphrase Bryson: The top ten most venomous snakes in the world all call Australia home and five of its critters – the funnel web spider, the box jellyfish, the blue ringed octopus, the paralysis tick and the stonefish are all the most lethal of their type.
And with that list of deadlies, he was just getting started.
Ironically, I was talking about the book and how Aussie’s can claim to have a rather interesting yet at times deadly birthplace with one of my sons on Saturday morning as we walked out the kitchen door … and there we were met by a snake, its business end already slithering away into the grass.
But no story to tell here as it was just a very well fed, green tree snake.
(If you haven’t come across ‘Down Under’ by Bill Bryson and are looking for an entertaining read, I can highly recommend it.)
