By Harry Schechter
Luke has been curious on this trip about the existence of poison ivy in several spots we’ve hiked through in New Zealand and Australia. In New Zealand, it was an easy answer – nope. There’s no poison ivy in New Zealand.
Today, as we were walking to the beach, he asked again, “Dad, is there poison ivy over here?” I simply replied, “no, but there might be some snakes in there.” Luke made a mental note of and then cheerfully continued on to the beach with me.
Then I remembered that of the world’s 10 deadliest snakes, all of them are Australian. No big deal. We’ve learned to make noise as we walk since they are more afraid of us than we are of them (a point which I contest).
Despite the country’s mega liters of venom, Australia is amazing. The people are endlessly friendly, it’s sunny, it’s clean, and kangaroos will just cross the road in front of you. As one of our Hotel hosts said, “it’s like living in a giant zoo.” There’s no where else in the world like it and I love it. It’s just that there’s a lot of toothy poisonous stuff to look out for.
To keep the good times rolling, I put together this handy guide of things to mind when traveling to Australia. It’s such a lethal country, we’ve split it up into several volumes covering snakes, insects, swimming, breathing etc.:
Volume One: Venomous Snakes
According to Australia Geographic, bites in Australia are very rare and often the result of people trying to kill the snake or show off in some way. Snakes bite humans out of self defense and have no interest in eating humans. Logistically, I imagine that would be a bit complicated anyway.
So far, only a brown snake has been encountered on our trip while horseback riding. Our guide just backed away and let it pass and offered this advice: don’t corner a snake so it feels trapped and it will most likely head off in another direction.
Here’s a nice list of some of Australia’s most dangerous snakes. The scariest one to me did not make that list however. It’s the Point Darwin sea snake and it’s not much bigger than an earthworm, but packs quite a wallop. Small and deadly it’s the ninja of Australia’s snakes.
Why some of these snakes produce venom powerful enough to take down an elephant, I cannot imagine. Ok, time to make dinner and swat a few fruit flies away. Just gonna do a quick search for venomous fruit flies and get back to work (maybe).
Stay tuned for Volume 2: The Ocean