A typical night in an Aussie shed... pics!

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briztoon

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Aug 13, 2011
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Man where do I start.

Most pet shops carry a range of spiders, scorpians and snakes you can buy as pets here. The most popular spider is the North Queensland bird eating spider.

Many years ago I used to date a girl whose auntie lives in Gympie (QLD) and studies spiders. At the time she was studying the white tailed spider, the one that in some cases it's bite causes necrotising arachnidism. That's where the bite area dies and and the tissue appears eat itself. Always used to love visiting her property in the hills outside of Gympie, there were some pretty awesome mountain bike tracks up there.

About 10 years ago I was in a pub and got bitten by a red back spider. It fell out of the umbrella we were sitting under and bit me on the ear. My ear ended up swelling up and I was a bit sick. To this day, I have a small red dot on my earlobe where I got bitten.

I caught my first snake when I was 6. We were playing in a nieghbours back yard and yellow faced whip snake came out of the trees and I picked it up. It was my first pet. Kept it in a 6 foot fish tank for 3 years, untill I let it go.

I have caught 8 of the 10 most poisonoues land snakes in Australia. The two I haven't caught are the Death Adder and Mulga Snake. Dad and I did come across a 6 foot Mulga once when I was 15 and we were bushwalking, but it was too big and too aggressive and when it started to chase us, I gave up trying to catch it. My most scariest (snake) moment came when I was swimming in a creek in Tassie (Tasmania) and a tiger snake swam right in front of me, but I ended up catching it. The funniest was catching a taipan out from under a cast iron bath tub at Ipswich. The second funniest occured on a camping trip in the Coomera Valley. I was relieving myself behind a gum tree and looked down to see a rather wet red bellied black snake. Needless to say I didn't catch that one, but did catch my first red bellied black snake during that trip.

What most people don't know is that a lot of sea snakes found off the coast of Australia are far deadlier than our land snakes.

However my scariest moment came when I was 16. I was on a 10 day Outward Bound camping trip outside of Townsville. We were travelling down a shallow creek on lilows, with our back packs on the pillows. We had just come off a particularly shallow and rocky section which entered into a lagoon. The body section of my lilow had ripped on the rocks and I was left sitting on the pillow, with my backpack on my thighs and my lower legs in the water, trying to blow up a spare lilow. All I could think about was "farkin crocs" and I'm screaming at the top of my lungs "make a farkin raft around me you ***". We didn't see any crocs, but there were some very large slides on the banks of the lagoon. Between that, and having a sharks tooth pulled out of my foot when I was 8 (must of stepped on it, I was waist deep in the Bribie Island passage), I now have a fear of deepish water, especially at night.

The Australian wildlife isn't that dangerous. More cyclists are killed on our roads each year, than are people killed by crocs, sharks, snakes or kangaroos. And yes Kangaroos can kill you. I have been chased by a big buck out at Carnarvon Gorge, and on the same camping trip a lady got attacked by a buck (probably the same one) and was gored when kicked in the belly by it, she survived.

Anyway, if 22 million bmc riding ACF's can survive down here, I'm sure the average tourist has nothing to worry about. Just don't visit Bondi beach, to many drunken loutish brits, and don't ride your bike in Sydney, worst roads in Australia.
 

briztoon

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Aug 13, 2011
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8,830
Martin318is said:
Gotta say that yes there are some bad spiders in Australia but they were NOTHING compared to the quantity of spiders per metre you can get in England. Around or village near Luton the hedges had THOUSANDS of spiders in them


Ever seen the movie Arachnaphobia? Living in Brisbane can be like that during heavy rains if you don't have screen doors. I used to live with my Grandmother in an older house, and when it poured, literally hundreds (well dozens anyway) of huntsmen spiders would come inside to escape the wet. Nothing worse than waking up because a big spider has run across your face while asleep in bed.
 
Martin318is said:
Unfortunately, have to report this from the news this morning:

Woman dies from snake bite

Sad news.

Gosh I like reading all of these latest posts...
yes the snake phobia for me overshadows all...could probably face a large spider but I would still shudder but would deal with it---snakes no way.
I really don't care if they are poisonous or non---they just freaking totally creep me out.

The spider across the face story reminds me of days I spend doing treks in Nepal. There the leeches are legendary and the encounters many. I remember some nights when I would put blobs of salt on top of the tiny holes in the bottom of my tent floor---
One particularly bad area with one trekking group saw pretty much everybody dealing with leech attacks...including one poor woman who woke up in the night and screamed that something was on her face, and when her husband turned on the flashlight she had a big leech on her face!

On another guy we found one in his ponytale and he screamed "GET IT OUT"...ha. Great times..