Things that can kill you in Australia

Nasty sunburn at Perth beach

You know, much has been made of the vast toxicity of Australian wildlife.  There is a story of a shark leaping onto the beach to lock jaws around the leg of a 12 year old boy…it had to be hit in the head with blunt instruments to get it to let go.  There are tales of the incredibly venomous taipan, which, to  sort of quote Bill Bryson, is a snake of such extraordinary danger that your last words are likely to be, “I say, is that a sn-?”  There is the blue-ringed octopus, a miniature octopus of delightful loveliness, and enough poison to kill three grown men; you may not even know it’s stung you until your lips start to tingle.  You’ll definitely know when you can’t move your arms or legs or, eventually, breathe.  There’s no antidote.  Much has also been made of dingos eating babies, of crocodile eyes glowing in billabongs at night, of funnelweb spiders.

But the most dangerous thing in Australia is actually not the flora and fauna: it’s the heat.  In the summer, it regularly gets to be about 40-45 degrees in the south of WA, where I live, and sometimes can get up to 50 in northern WA (Broome, Port Hedland) and the interior (where that big red rock is…yes, it’s called Uluru).  50 degrees Celsius.  That is about 13 degrees hotter than your core body temperature if you’re unfevered.  You may think that air conditioning is not a necessity, that you can live without shorts in the summer, but you would be wrong.  You wonder why someone would strip down and enter a water hole known to be full of crocodiles in the middle of a summer afternoon…then you realize that they were probably thirsty and hot, and it makes a lot more sense.

You’re in more danger of dying from heatstroke in most of Australia than you are from snakebite, and two in every three Australians will be diagnosed with skin cancer by the time they’re in their 70s.  This is a brutal country, but it has nothing to do with the outback or bush or the animals therein; it has to do with whether you remembered sunblock and a litre of water when you went for a walk.

Posted by | Comments (4)  | January 11, 2011
Category: General, Oceania


4 Responses to “Things that can kill you in Australia”

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  2. Val Says:

    Wow, nasty sunburn indeed. I was actually planning a trip to Sidney this summer, but dunno, perhaps winter would be more appropriate (out of safety reasons, obviously:)) )