I knew there were more things in Australia that could kill me then anywhere else on earth, and I wanted to know what they were. But not, you know, up close and personal...unless they were dead. Sydney's
Australia Museum presented me with just the opportunity I was looking for. The place was packed with dead and mounted horror, and the info to go with it. Here's what I learned:
- Twenty of the world's twenty-five most venomous snakes are located in Australia.
- There's a fish that looks like a rock. It's called the stone fish. It has highly venomous spines that can pierce the bottom of a flip-flop (Aussies call the "thongs"). It results in immediate paralysis, and the only treatment is CPR for as long as 24 hours to keep the body breathing and circulating blood until the poison works through the system.
- Wombat poo is cube-shaped. Some wombats like to pick it up and place it on rocks and logs to serve as "I pooped here" signs to other wombats.
- Predatory salt water crocodiles can swim 30 km/h without causing a ripple. They watch you and learn your routines before they strike.
- Australia has a predatory sea snail (that's right, a snail) that shoots (yes, shoots) little harpoons with enough venom to immobilize a human. There's no anti-venom.
- The biggest marsupial that even lived was called the "Diprotodon." These freaky two-meter tall hippo-koalas were around when the Aborigines arrived in Australia and probably made them pee their pants.
I spent a total of five days in Sydney, and armed with a public transit pass that gave me access to trains, ferries, and buses, I saw just about everything I wanted to. But the last day I was there, the temperature reached 42 degrees. I'd had enough of the heat. Greedy, I know - there were snowstorms in Canada, tropical heat in Tonga...but I wanted something in between. The daily weather report pointed me in the right direction - Tasmania!
the horror
the horror
