Let me get this straight, Australia. You’re a huge barren desert, you’re crawling with baby-eating mega-spiders and snakes that can turn a man to stone with one venomous glance and saltwater crocodiles so fast they can travel back in time and eat you twice, and your beautiful, tantalizing coastlines are packed with invisible death jellies and ravenous twenty-foot sharks? Oh, but the surfing is really, really good. Okay.
Concerns were raised after a 3m great white shark was found dead with two huge bites taken out of its body. Experts believe the bites were made by an even larger predatory fish.
“Whatever attacked and took chunks out of this big shark must be massive,” said Ashton Smith, 19. “I’ve heard about the big one that’s lurking out there somewhere.”
Australia is not so much a country as it is a snack delivery system for horrifying beasts.
Swimmers have been warned to stay out of the waters.
But that’s exactly what the sabretooth kangaroos WANT!!! Don’t play their game!
LINDY I LOVE YOUR WRITING AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH that first paragraph simply owns
Lindy, thank you for the laugh. Don’t forget the west coast has its own great white eaters, the orcas. They hunt them down for their livers, and leave the rest as evidence.
Lindy, you are totally hilarious. Awesome.
I went sailing a few years ago in Australia, and our safety briefing was 4 hours long. You couldn’t walk in water with a sandy bottom because of sting rays, you couldn’t walk in water with a rocky bottom because of stonefish (“hey, just so you know, sometimes rocks are actually fish, and if you step on one, you die”), you couldn’t jump directly into the water because there might be a school of tiny jellyfish that could give you a heart attack, you couldn’t go anywhere near the mouth of a river emptying into the ocean (crocodiles).
And this is before we even started talking about spiders. Dear lord, the spiders. Australia, you be crazy.
i’m waiting for the four part series on sabertooth kangaroos, lindy.
Kick-ass.
Amusingly, as an Australian I loved bushwalking and camping. Now I live in the US I am so scared of the fact that you have BEARS and MOUNTAIN LIONS hanging around in the forest (the forest areas near me, at least) that I refuse to go camping. However, Americans laugh my fear of these things…
I think the issue is that I grew up understanding the dangers of sharks/jellyfish/spiders etc so it never seemed like a big deal to me, whereas my Californian pals grew up knowing about bears and mountain lions.
You had me at “snack delivery system.”
“In Australia, we have 14 out of the 10 most deadliest spiders in the world”
Orcas can be found in Australian waters according to the American Cetacean Society factsheet. They’re the apex predator of the oceans. I bet it was an orca.
we’re going to need a bigger boat.
I went snorkeling in Australia when I was an exchange student at 12, and beforehand they gave us a safety briefing that basically boiled down to FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING!
(Of course, being an idiot tween, I touched every fucking piece of coral and underwater creature I could get my hands on… so I still can’t believe I lived through that.)
r
What makes the whole Australian condition even more amusing is that the toughest blokes wear stubbies.
Really? No dingo-ate-my-baby joke yet?
Another description of Australian wildlife:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read…
But Lindy, no one compares 2 U.
Read last week’s New Yorker story about the Great Australian Walls of Fire!
Yeah, Australia made a hell of a prison for the Brits.
*shudder* (crumples Dixie cup to the soundtrack of a bass)
My favorite is probably the cone shells, pretty little tiny seashells that leap out (yes!) and bite you if you pick them up, and then you die. Or the blue ring octopus, whose poison is survivable by humans as long as they get you into an iron lung within a few minutes.
Australia also has all ten of the ten deadliest snakes: Inland Taipan, King Brown, Tiger, Sea Krait, and the charming Death Adder. The deadliest spider is Australia’s Funnel Web. The deadliest sea creatures we’ve already covered.
Gimme a cute li’l ol’ bear any old day.
My demonic ex-girlfriend moved there, which delighted the hell out of me, because I would honestly rather vacation on Antarctica. Most of the Australians I’ve met have been assholes, and yeah, the wildlife doesn’t redeem the place. I will never go there, and, so, will never ever run into her. w00t
Queensland has beautiful beaches, I had a blast there. Everyone was nice to me. I swam at the beaches, visited the outback, hung out in the jungle and dove on the reef, and all I saw were some reef sharks. Although I do hear the crocs will swim out to the reefs to attack people… One deadly creature no one has mentioned is the cassowary, which is a 6 foot tall bird of prey with deadly talons. A modern day velociraptor. I saw some in captivity.
Bummer Violet,
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many wonderful Australians. I hope you get to meet more kind ones.
A Seattlite living in Sydney: the snakes run away, the spiders are slow, and the sharks…well…they really do eat people. But usually only at Bondi.
But after having spent a lot of time in both the cascades and the blue mountains, it’s definitely a LOT safer in the Australian bush. You might encounter a scared snake or skiddish roos, but it doesn’t quite compare to a bear trying get at the marshmallows you accidentally left in your tent or the unexpected blizzard. No, the Australian bush isn’t so bad. Unless you’re British.
Ah, yes, the cassowary: giant kicking bird, can run more than 30 MPH and jump six feet in the air, with six-inch-long razor-sharp daggers sticking out of its feet, with which it loves to disembowel humans, or sever limbs. Add “world’s deadliest bird” to the list.
Violet, Australia is a lovely place, despite all the murderous critters. Melbourne is as charming a city as exists anywhere on this planet. They’re not all assholes.
Love it Lindy. 🙂
It’s really not that bad here guys. Really really. That shark was taken off one of my favourite surfing beaches. I’ve been surfing that beach since I was 14 and I’ve never seen a shark in the water while I’ve been surfing. (Having said that I have seen plenty of them over the years from the beach… doh!) The bottom line is though, sharks be everywhere, but shark attacks are pretty unusual. You’re in more danger of getting caught in a rip and drowning.
I hear you Violet. There are heaps of arseholes here. Bit of a human condition though, arseholery…
@24- I believe arseholery is a condition distinct to Commonwealth countries.
@25, touche. Sorry, I meant “assholery” of course…
Lindy- youre funny!
LOL.
Think of Cone Shells like deadly Skunks. You don’t pick them up or they shoot you with poison, but yes they look pretty!
Know anyone to throw stones at a bear and expect it not to attack? You ought to think similar of snakes!
Dee @6 has a point. The northern hemisphere has Alligators, southern Crocodiles.
Head further away from the equator and you don’t find as many spiders, snakes and jellyfish – but then its definitely not as hot!
Even if it is warmer than Canada, Australia is no small place…
I’m always amazed by how people see their own backyard…myself included!
I would take Byron bay over Madison beach any day ever.
Orcas (kill whales) are known to prey on great white sharks; in fact they may prefer them to other prey. Oh, and they’re about 7m long! Mystery solved.
Oh, Lindy, thank you for that.
Not only are Aussie megafauna effin’ scary but they’re given silly names so that you get the posthumous humiliation of having been eaten by something called a gang-gang or a spotted wobbegong or Woodward’s wallaroo.
(Seriously! I was going to make up names but instead looked up Australian Fauna and discovered I so don’t have to.)
Can a shark really eat another shark? I’ve never seen a shark, yet research one. But I’ve always wanted to know if anyone got bitten IN HALF by a shark and lived. I’ve heard of people who got their arm bitten off. Never just all legs. I wonder if someone has ever actually ripped a tooth out of their mouth.