I'm back in Sydney. It seems to be just as hot and humid here as it was in Darwin. I had a beautiful last day in Darwin. I walked down to the harbour area and got excited watching a ferry departing for the Tiwi islands. Hopefully, I'll be on it sometime soon.I sat around on the beach reading "Gould's Book of Fish" that Faith and Mel sent me for Christmas. What a wonderful book! It's impossible to put down and I've now finished it, but wonder whether I should just start again from the beginning.
For the flight back I bought "See Australia and DIE". It's a book full of how people have died in Australia. I bought it trying to learn about the mistakes that people made (so that I don't make them myself). It was scary reading. One guy (in Sydney) was changing a light bulb in his house and then got off the chair and stood straight on a funnel-web spider. Amazingly he survived - by being rushed to Ryde Hospital!Oh dear, I'm listening to the radio at the moment and someone has just been "taken by a shark". There's plenty of stories in the book about people being eaten by sharks. "Since the shark wouldn't release its grip, they figured they'd have to drag it in. So two of the rescuers grabbed the 2.5-metre shark by the tail and began to haul it towards the shore. One young lifesaver ran into the water and smashed the shark over the head with a surfboard."
Bloody hell ... I've just had the shock of my life. I was reading about all these dangerous creatures and then trod on a lizard that had ambled in and was sitting under my dining table! Its tail is now wriggling around on the floor.Anyway, after reading the entire book it does seem that there are a few things that you can do to survive in Australia. 1) Don't be "religious" or "spiritual". It seems that if you are then you have a good chance of deciding to walk across the Great Sandy Desert or something equally stupid. 2) Don't pick up animals. One guy picked up a friendly blue-tongue lizard and played with it before realising that it was actually a death adder. Another person decided to let a "blue-ringed octopus" to walk around on his arm. 3) Don't eat a fish unless you know what it is. There's a story of a young couple that caught a fish, ate it and then died. It turned out to be a puffer fish. 4) Get an EPIRB. It seems that almost half of the people in the stories would have survived if they had one. I plan to get one before my next trip. Finally, 5) don't go near crocodiles.
It's just as well that I read the book after my trip otherwise I probably wouldn't have left the hotel. There's one story of a group that went camping. "At about 4am, a massive 4.2-metre crocodile emerged from the water and made a beeline for one particular tent. Strangely, it ignored the tent with all the food. Instead, it lumbered up the bank and went straight for one of the furthest tents from the water." The people in this story survived because 1) a 60-year old grandma jumped on the back of the crocodile and 2) they had an EPIRB.This isn't a cheerful blog post.
Anyway, I'm planning a new trip somewhere. There are so many options!! Ms M. Mao will be visiting tomorrow and then I'm going snorkelling with the pulsar group on Monday. Then I drive to Parkes.
2 comments:
In buying a EPIRB (ELT in North America) remember that the SARSAT satellites will no longer be monitoring 121.5 MHz from February 2009. They will only be monitoring 406 MHz.
It's a pity that the SPOT devices are twice as expensive in Australia as in Canada because they work well: they can indicate that you're well as well as that you've fallen down a well (say). Well, only if the well is fairly shallow.
200 tourists a year.......
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