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  1. It’s the biggest factor that would put me off moving to Australia (the second being the distance from Oakwell), that the country seems to be full of things that want to kill you. Killer crocs, killer snakes, killer spiders and Mick Taylor.

  4. The irony is that the places people come to Aust to visit are the most dangerous. The tropical parts have the Crocs and in the summer months sea waters have the irakinji jellyfish which can result in agonisingly painful deaths so swimming in the sea in the hottest months is risky.
    Sydney especially northern beaches has funnel web spiders ( nasty)
    Down south snakes ( mainly in summer) and the occasional shark but pretty tame.
    Sharks seem to be more common and more widely spread than before.

  5. I played golf in Florida a couple of years ago. We were advised not to look for any lost balls if they went off the fairway into undergrowth (snakes) or water hazards (alligators), I never hit the ball straighter!

    • when I lived in Miami Lakes the apartment I lived in was next to a golf course that we played most weekends.
      Alligators were a common sight but rarely a threat.
      They also had a floodlit pitch and putt course that you could play at night – if you missed the green and ended in bunkers in the un floodlit part you were prone to be met by a posse of American bullfrogs. For me these were much scarier than the gators.

  7. Mrs Beezer and I spent a month in Australia in 2003.

    The final few days spent at a holiday resort in Port Douglas in Queensland.

    We hired a couple of bikes one morning and proceeded hence into the locale. I must say it’s a lovely spot. Eventually we came upon a residential area, a group of houses spaced out in a crescent with a significant stream running through with some dense woodland at the back.

    We cycled past the stream. I noticed a yellow warning sign. ‘No Fishing’, perhaps? ‘No Paddling’? Nope.

    ‘Beware Crocodiles’

    F**k..Off.

    (I took a photo of it before pedalling away at velocity. I might try and find it)

  11. Be thankful you’re not in Laos

    Many species grow very large – in Laos, male giant huntsman spiders (Heteropoda maxima) attain a legspan of 25–30 centimetres (9.8–11.8 in).

    that’s like a vinyl record toddling across the floor at you

  12. It’s all a bit overblown. The only actual predatory animals that will kill you here are sharks and crocs, and you have to be exceedingly unlucky for the former and a complete idiot for the latter.

    Spiders: The big, scary looking ones like the huntsmen are harmless (it’s like a bee sting), and there have been no deaths from funnelweb bites (the only really deadly one here) for at least 40 years, despite them being common in Australia’s most populous city.

    Snakes: Here’s the thing with Australian venomous snakes- they have exceedingly small fangs, which means the venom doesn’t penetrate far and needs to be taken into the lymphatic system to circulate. This is why we are taught the compression bandage technique here for treating snakebite. There is enough time for antivenom to be given, thus fatalities are rare. Also, snakes are desperate to stay out of the way of people and will only bite if provoked or accidentally stood on.

    The real tourist killers in Australia are far more mundane: drowning in the ocean and dehydrating in the outback.

    • Seems to me it’s mainly dogs that do the snake provoking, and then owners get bitten trying to protect them. Another good reason for not owning a dog…

      But yes – I’ve lived on Oz on and off for over ten years and in all that time I’ve seen four snakes – two carpet pythons and two red-bellied blacks, which are venomous but not lethal.

      Having said which, if I got bitten by a snake I’d probably die of a heart attack long before the venom got anywhere.

  13. Isn’t it true that those big buggers, by Brit standards, Cardinal spiders, are venomous, but have teeth to short to pierce our tough hide. I know they nip, from a lifetime getting rid for sisters, wives and children. The old quick cupping them into a hand and running, quickly, to door or window. Fact: my first wife actually jumped on a chair when one big one scuttled in, just like in the Beano.

  14. Snakes are cold blooded so they like to sun in open areas, ie tracks in the bush where people walk. So they attack when startled. Good to be noisy or if a suspect area throw rocks ahead of you so they can scarper.
    @Podicle – the irakinji jellyfish aw not to be overlooked.

  15. Some years ago as a bit of a work junket I was sent on a snake handling course and it was a great fun day. After a morning learning about snakes (including the fact that South East Queensland, where I live, has the highest biodiversity of snakes in the world) we spent the afternoon practicing handling techniques on a variety of snakes. We were paired up with a trainer, and they would literally dump the snakes out of containers onto the grass and we would have to use the hook and bag technique to catch them.

    Well, we worked our way up the list that day from carpet snakes (large pythons that are non venomous), through black snakes, taipans, inland taipan (deadliest snake in the world) death adder etc. Most of them just wanted to get away from you and happily went into the catch bag.

    Anyway, at the end of the day they brought out the Eastern Brown snakes. These are 3rd or 4th most deadly snakes in the world, and are the most aggressive in Australia. We had to wear protective chaps (arseless, of course!) as these snakes were on another scale altogether. They were the only snake that would come towards you if they were provoked, and would rear up and strike repeatedly.

    It is no coincidence that they are responsible for the vast majority of fatal bites in Australia, but again, their preference is to get away from you and they will only strike if cornered and provoked. It was a great lesson.

    • Yikes! That is a work junket in Australia?? Wow! I love it.

      Here in Sweden, a work junket usually consists of going to a charming manor house in the countryside, listening to a few pep talks, pigging out on some delicious nosh and then having a sauna with Mavis from Accounts.

      If some Crocodile Dundee wannabe turned up at activity time with a tucker-bag full of Eastern Browns, there would be a riot!

  16. Our most deadly snake in terms of number of bites and deaths has the most prosaic of names – the brown snake.

    ‘It got me three times’: Cool-headed mate saves teen bitten by deadly snake

    • Snake names in Australia are definitely a case of ‘say what you see’.
      Green snake in a tree = Green Tree Snake
      Brown snake = Brown Snake
      Brown snake in tree = Brown Tree Snake
      Black snake = Black Snake
      Black snake with red abdomen = Red Bellied Black Snake
      Etc etc

      An interesting one is the Death Adder, originally named Deaf Adder because it seemed so placid. When they realised how deadly it was it was quickly renamed.

  18. And then there’s the legendary case from 1988…

    “A bloke named Gordon from Darwin, Australia lost his arm, the use of his legs, and was revived three times on the operating table after an encounter with a king brown snake, the 21st most deadly venomous snake in the world. Gordon has said, “I still can’t believe my arm’s been chopped off just for one snake.”

    Perhaps nine snakes who each bit him once would be more easily believed than the one snake who bit him nine times. Gordon, who has admitted he was drunk at the time, had been driving with a friend from Mandorah to Darwin when they saw the snake. He picked it up with his left hand “because I was holding a beer in my right one.” The snake bit the web of his hand, but Gordon managed to withstand the pain and put it in a plastic bag. He threw the bag in the back of the car.

    Once again quoting Gordon, “For some stupid reason, I stuck my hand back in the bag, and it must have smelled blood, and it bit me another eight times.” His friend drove him to a nearby hotel, where he was taken by ambulance to the hospital. His friend tried to keep him conscious by, as Gordon said, “whacking me in the head and pouring beer on me.”

    Despite his friend’s quick action, doctors have said that it will take a long time and a lot of rehabilitation before Gordon regains full muscle control. When he does, we fondly anticipate another Darwin Award attempt.”

    https://darwinawards.com/i/stupid1999-18.jpg

  20. In his very enjoyable autobiography, Unreliable Memoirs, Clive James, makes his contribution to that lively genre of which I am a great fan: Outrageous Aussie Tales about Terrifying Beasties Down Under which Will Scare the Shit out of Whingeing Poms.

    His description of venomous redback spiders lurking in the toilet, certainly gave me the willies.

    Here it is for you all to enjoy.

    https://archive.clivejames.com/books/um1-2.htm

    • I’m glad to see that site has been archived. I picked a TV review at random, and it turned out to be the one in which James memorably likens Rod Stewart to ‘a bifurcated Marrow’. He also writes, ‘He hopped along like a pensionable cherub’. I know cherubs are usually meant to be infants, but even so it seems a bit harsh on Rod who was 35 at the time.

      https://archive.clivejames.com/books/psychic.htm

      • That’s such a treasure trove, especially as the TV books are out of print. It’s always gold when he gets his teeth into Superstars or Grandstand or whatever. Prose poetry.

        I often think of his description of The Period Laugh, adopted by hammy actorrrrs in costume dramas “Nyo-hoh-ho” etc, and the RANDOM SHOUT that male actors drop in to show how intensely they are feeling the role.

        35 seems young for a rock star now…

  21. I still remember the story in the Straits Times just after I had moved to Singapore regarding a guy being bitten on the bollocks by a snake hiding in the toilet. I can’t find the full article, only the synopsis……

    ‘Former national athlete bitten by snake in toilet [ARTICLE]
    Page 1
    Former national athlete bitten by snake in toilet John Lui By A FORMER national shot put and discus champion was bitten on his testicles yesterday by a python hiding m a toilet bowl he was sitting on. Mr Fok Keng Choy, 43, a supervisor at the Tanglin Golf Course’

    https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Issue/straitstimes19930804

    • A python lurking in the bog and making a lunge for my nuts??

      This is truly the stuff of nightmares. Even Edgar Allen Poo did not come up with a tale of toilet terror to match that.

      After this, I can ABC offering Junior a job as a presenter on the telly.. Junior’s Half Hour of Horror.

    • Wonderful! This is real country music. A song about the pains and tribulations that ordinary people endure.

      I bet Nashville has not produced a song about spiders lurking in the loo!

  25. In all these tales of terror we’re neglecting the everyday irritations.
    1: mosquitos. Nothing beats swatting one on your leg and seeing a splodge of your own blood. They’re particularly fond of me – fresh meat I guess. Non-malarial, which is something, but there’s Ross River Fever in SE QLD now, thanks to them. Bastards.
    2: midges, known round here as no-see-ums, on account of how you never see them bite you. Itchy bastards.
    3: bush turkeys, also known as brush turkeys. Ugly destructive bastards which trash your garden and build enormous nests with the pickings. We have a garden full of chicks, so that’s not going to end well. Like all other Oz wildlife it’s illegal even to hate them, let alone kill them. I chase them round the garden with my NERF gun, but they’re too stupid to realise they’re being persecuted. They’re moving south and have made it as far as Sydney. Only a matter of time before they reach Melbourne ha ha.
    4. ants. Can’t be bothered to look them up, little bitey bastards that nip your toes if you’re not wearing shoes and socks, and who does that in the summer?
    5. Ticks. Bastards. Nuff said.
    6. Stinging tree, also known as suicide tree. Swipe yourself with the leaves and the pain is intense and long lasting. Never encountered it myself, but surely only a matter of time.

    • Bullants. Excruciating bite. One bit me on end of big toe. Family seemed to think it hilarious. Could barely walk. Bastards: bullants and family.
      March flies – big like blowies only bite with what must be a large blunt syringe. No blood so must just be for the sport. Fortunately they are slow so you can kill em easy. If you want to get your tally up – they like blue. A flipper is a good lure.
      I was walking along a lovely beach , Waratah bay since you ask – they swarmed me and not even March. The cheek.

  26. NZ doesn’t really pull its weight with scary beasties but the occasional appearance of a giant weta pinning down the cat with a half-Nelson makes me pine fur the days of the cute little stag beetles of Blighty.

      • Yep.

        The local story, that I got from one of the local ambos, was that the family did everything spot on in terms of cre and treatment before proper medical staff took a look.

        Which is impressive. I rather think I’d have been swearing up a storm and just yelling for the hospital

  28. We get snakes in the garden, and occasionally in the house. Once one stretched across my desk, behind my monitor, over five feet long. It was as scared as I was, and leapt (snakes can leap!) off through the door as I pushed back in a panic chair slide. And we had a big bugger in a bedroom which required calling the village snake guy, who put it in a sack with one of those scissory extended gripper things. Apart from the occasional scorpion, though, there’s not much else in the way of lethal wildlife here (although you want to avoid Bangkok expats).

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