Australia's Deadliest. Thanks for the Fosters beer and the Body Bag.

reply to post by DaMod



That is one nice spider

Surely it can't be more dangerous than them humans though

Being an australian near sydney I don't worry about snakes much in my area, most deadly/more aggressive snakes live further north.

If I ever wake up with a snake at the bottom of my sleeping bag I can hopefully wiggle slowly out and get rid of it. That's probably the most likely scenario I could see happening. I have almost stepped on a red belly black snake hiking but it just froze (it's head was facing away from me) then when i went back near it to get footage it slowly went away.

*More than 20 people die each year in Australia from horse riding related accidents. Less than 2 a year die from a snakebite.*


As to spiders I don't fear spider bites in the bush, they don't go around hunting humans. I've killed over 10 red backs in my house and 1 funnel web that was in my running shoe !

Red backs seem pretty placid to me,we used to fight all kinds of spiders,red backs included vs ants and other creatures in an ice cream bucket when I as a kid. The only thing is I just keep eyes open/alert when I'm cleaning out the garage,or cleaning up outside for example.

Note no one has died from a bite since an anti venom program was introduced in 1956. Same for funnel webs.


I think that if I hiked in america like I do in australia I'd have to watch out for bears and mountain lions(or the like) in some areas. I think geez would I not be able to cook meat as it might attract a dangerous animal ?
Or would you always have to light a fire to keep them away ?
Would you always have to carry a gun during bear mating season etc ?

I'm sure american hikers are aware/used to precautions for their environment, just as us aussies are.

reply to post by ocker


OMG those pink ones are awesome! Now the other ones would freak me out! Sweet!

You sure have some creepy crawlies down there I would be ok with the snakes but spiders well I would freeze and not be able to move!

Blimey I found this video of a 50ft dead snake in OZ

I am also from australia and would like to give you two thumbs up on your post! Im from the far north, and in some remote aboriginal communities i travel to there are reports of monsterous salt water crocodiles that are of unexplainable size, also RIP steve

reply to post by S-man


Hi mate good response
Yes RIP Steve

Ocker

reply to post by Somamech


good one
like your style


Ocker

OK, so I have an admission to make. I was rather a, lets say......sadistic.....child who would perform such experiments as blowing up Red Ants nests and putting ants in spiders webs...

Anyhoo, I remember I once put a Daddy Long Legs spider and a Redback in a lunchbox to watch the fun....and strike me dead the bloody Daddy Long Legs won! He literally just walked on top of the Redback and wrapped him up in about 6 seconds - the Redback didn't look like he knew what the hell was happening!

I have shot many a brown snake on my grandparents farm, one of them was a whopping 3 metres long! I've beheaded a few Red Belly Blacks, with a shovel, that used to stray to close to the house when we lived in the rural areas of Sydney. We once had a Diamond Python turn up there too, nice fella he was - about 4 metres long totally harmless so we kept the dogs away from him and shepherded him back into the bush behind our house.

I have to say, that even though we house some of the most deadly critters known to man, they are also extremely unique and beautiful in their own way. They are here to be respected, not feared. Common sense replaces fear here, if we feared our critters no-one would ever leave the house!!

Howdy

The ockerozweathermanejaylinz fantasy turducken, an invention of a possibly overwrought mind, brought to memory a blue throated helmet headed cassowary with red fleshy wattles drooping from the neck, that lived in the rain forest fringing a pioneer farmstead I once worked on at Upper Daradgee. At the southern end of the Wooroonooran National Park where Mount Bartle Frere, Queenslands highest, looms large beyond the other side of the valley forested ridge; where a thousand and one sulphur crested cockatoos were seen to overnight roost on the occasion of a migratory passover.
Lean rangy cattle brought in from dryer country further west were fattened on the lush grass growing in the steep, lone milky pine paddock valley, where ran a fast flowing cold water tributary of the North Johnstone River.
And sugar cane was grown on the hilltops.
As an able cane cutter I was employed on the sugar cane rather than with the fattening bullocks but I shared a barracks living quarter with the two stockmen, as cowboys are known in Australia.
Anyway, the cassowary, which can disembowel a man with one swipe of their powerful clawed feet if cornered, was occasionally to be seen crossing forest cleared open ground. at a distance.
Macadamia nuts are endemic to the forests in those parts and form part of the cassowary diet.

Two sugar cane varieties grown at Upper Daradgee were Badilla, with soft chocolate colored stems, much relished by raiding feral bush pigs, and Pindar, a blisteringly hard growing greeny grey purplish stemmed variety of cane not so attractive to marauding pigs.

They eat cassowary in New Guinea if they can catch 'em but how it compares with emu, as observed running wild in the arid whirling willy~willy country west of Mount Isa, I know not.

"My soul, do not seek immortal life, but exhaust the realm of the possible."
Pythian Odes bk 1, l. 109 Pindar, the Greek lyric poet.
If Ancient Greek sage Heraclitus is correct in his belief that our evolving consciousness is eternally recurring to perception as a sentient life lived forever and a day, then its okay by me!
Send her down, Hughie!
You're having a laugh surely, Hughie!
You'll have to excuse an old dingbat wordsmiths fond memory reminiscence of a now distant, bit of a larrikin nong, youth.
Having been dingbat nong educated to such charming names by battler Sheilas of my knowing at a na na na na ~~~~ jig, and a gig, in the Down Under land where the Queen of Sheba sun orchid blooms: seen and unseen; scene upon scene, flickering through the dingbat camera and projector that is a cricket & batman memory manacled so metaphysical.
Like when eating a rats coffin at the races, to put a dubious meat pie down spin on the upchuck googly, and illustrate the sidewalk with a technicolor yawn, or a pavement pizza, or even a curbside quiche, following a liquid laugh to make you chunder chuckle all over again.

Wouldn't mind trying a vanilla milkshake at Bondi Beach again, to tell, at another googly ball, the dinkum Taronga Park dimwit koala thirsty truth.

Does the nulla~nulla nulify the waddy walloper, is the evolved at a revolve nincompoop dunderhead, irony wood shillelagh, hug andor ugh, c him panzee beauyesbeau, Zarathrustra apeman bona fide 2009 dawn question, to gobbledegook, gobbledegook, flobbergob & buggerlugs ignore!

4.7 metre croc caught, WOW have a look at this BIG BOY!!!!

Someones been eating their protein.

www.abc.net.au...

Originally posted by OzWeatherman
The box jellyfish is more abundant in the northern territory. In Darwin you can only swim in 3 months of the year, due to this. North Queensland has a bigger problem with the tiny Irukandji jellyfish as it is small enough to swim through stinger nets

There also the red back spider which isnt as venemous as the funnel web but can kill

The Irukandji is one creature that really scares me, something that small and virtually invisible with the power to kill any human with the long tiny tentacles is amazing. I wonder if we have the shrimp that has the super sonic claw shockwave attack down here also. As deadly as creatures get, I think the deadliest of all would have to be humans.

Also, when it comes to insects and arachnids, I find that I always seem to find new creatures everywhere, just how many species of these bugs do we have?

[edit on 23-10-2009 by Xenus]

Yea Aussies, this thread has proven to me to never go anywhere near Australia. I swear, when you book on Quantas for a round trip flight, do they laugh over the phone?

"*SNICKER* Bloke just asked for a round trip flight, sounded like a yank!"

"Give him the black bag special, full fare one way half fare back."

Ya and could someone translate this post for us?

post by Epipactis English would be preferable, thanks.

[edit on 10/23/2009 by whatukno]

Originally posted by whatukno
Yea Aussies, this thread has proven to me to never go anywhere near Australia. I swear, when you book on Quantas for a round trip flight, do they laugh over the phone?

"*SNICKER* Bloke just asked for a round trip flight, sounded like a yank!"

"Give him the black bag special, full fare one way half fare back."

Ya and could someone translate this post for us?

post by Epipactis English would be preferable, thanks.

[edit on 10/23/2009 by whatukno]

Sounds like poetry or something using names and objects found in Australia. Names can't be translated and objects can be looked up. Some slang in there too. Many names for towns and such have an aboriginal derived name or uses their language.

reply to post by whatukno


The post you are referring to looks to be written by a typical Aussie "bushman" type, full of Aussie slang and an "outback" way of putting it all together grammatically. That and I see a deliberate effort to squeeze in as much Aussie slang as possible lol.

I can understand it, from what I see he talks about an animal called a Cassowary that he encountered on his many travels as a Sugar Cane farmer and likens it to the "creature" that a few other Aussie's in this thread have invented (which he names the "ockerozweathermanejaylinz fantasy turducken")

He then says a little about himself then launches off into a tirade of Aussie slang that serves no other purpose than to confuse the hell out of anyone who is not Aussie lol.

That just about covers it.

reply to post by Kryties


Ah so it's bull! I know bull well!



Cmon, now, I am just finishing up whatukno's guide to African American slang volume 14 (I live in Detroit)

I just don't need a whole new lexicon shoved on me like that without warning

reply to post by Pilgrum

Originally posted by Pilgrum
Prolonged wet weather induces the huntsman spiders to come inside out of the rain but their natural habitat is outside under the bark of trees where they're useful in cleaning up large amounts of insects. They're actually stars of the cinema having played the swarm of spiders in the film 'Arachniphobia'. They are very fast and aggressive but it's mostly all show and I've even had a large one chase me (territorial thing I think).

Actually, the spiders in "Arachnophobia" were from across the ditch, here in NZ.

Marshall held a ''spider Olympics'' to chose which breed should play Big Bob's baby brood. After testing half a dozen varieties of spider — including wolf spiders, huntsman spiders, and Peruvian tarantulas — for their climbing skills, speed, surface suction, and a variety of other talents, Marshall finally chose the New Zealand Delena, a three-inch-wide genus with especially keen abilities.

A Movie With Legs...Lots of 'Em
Behind the scenes of ''Arachnophobia''

They are a harmless species , like most of our spiders, which is also known as the Avondale spider. Although we have been infiltrated by those pesky white tails, nasty things. And we also have a rare native spider related to the Australian Red Back, the Katipo spider. There has been one confirmed death from the Katipo, but bites are very rare.
Katipo Spider

Other than that, we pretty much have no dangerous wild life. In fact, if you are roaming the bush, the most dangerous thing you can encounter (non-human, at least) is probably stinging nettle!

The stings of 'Urtica ferox', the 'ongaonga' or tree nettle of New Zealand, have been known to kill horses, dogs and at least one human. So keep an eye out for stinging nettle if you venture into the NZ bush. Other than that, you should be fine

[edit on 23-10-2009 by Curious and Concerned]

Another time, a Taser was successfully used to safely deter an out-of-control alligator in Florida. "But then they tried it in Australia on those big salt-water crocodiles," Guilbault related, "and that didn't work. It just made them mad."
news.cnet.com...

LOL. Just goes to show how tough our critters are.

reply to post by Xenus


What the heack are they doing tasering our crocs?Leave our big ugly salt water babies alone! Foolish Loonies with their toys.

A 49-year-old dog owner in Arthur's Creek, near Melbourne, has spoken of how he and his Blue Heeler Rocky surprised a sleeping kangaroo on a walk. Rocky chased the kangaroo into a pond, where it then turned around and pinned the dog under water. Chris Rickard, expecting to "take a hit or two" tried to save his dog from the kangaroo's grip. It was then that the animal kicked Rickard with its powerful hind legs, injuring him across his abdomen and face. He is in a stable condition in hospital. Rocky, "half-drowned" but is alive after Rickard elbowed the kangaroo in the throat, ending the altercation.

www.shortnews.com...

Our Roos can get nasty too

One word.. greenies =)