Australia Warning or Danger Tips by iandsmith

I love our beaches and so do the tourists. There is only one small problem.
Each year in Australia more visitors die in the water than anywhere else. This includes inland waterways as well.
However, the major cause is people's lack of understanding of how a beach works. You need to know that currents are constantly at work, tides are ebbing and flowing, waves vary in size and there are things out there that sting.
Please, if you wish to enjoy the beach, spend a little time before hand with a lifeguard or surfer to better know what's happening and what to do in case you get caught in a rip (don't fight it!).
Hope this helps someone.
The pic is taken from Donbogan headland (northern N.S.W.) looking south.

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As I brushed the feathers away from my grille and lamented the passing of yet another dead parrot (galah specifically) I thought it might be a good idea to let travellers know about things you are bound to run into, literally, in Australia. I'll start with 'roos. Lovely little hopping things that most tourists are hanging to see. Sadly, the most that any tourist is likely to see of them in the wild is on the main road, and, not in an upright position and not laying down sleeping. More your dead type marsupial. The average damage in dollars they do per prang is just over $3,000 aussie bucks according to the latest insurance company figures and my own personal experience verifies that. So, how do you avoid them I hear you thinking. Really only one way - don't drive at dusk or night time in the country. If you see one during the day you'll be in the outback, doing some serious bushwalking or visiting a zoo. It's during night time when they mainly feed. They're not totally stupid, they try and avoid the heat of the day, unlike many tourists.
And, what about the parrots? Well, around spring and summer one is apt to find them picking around the side of the road. Certain types of grain have an intoxicating effect on some of them and you will find their reaction times are much slower than you realise. So, if you are cruising along at 100-120kph you are just about sure to hit one, especially galahs (that's the grey and pink ones). However, at around 80-90kph they tend to fly away in time. Excuse me, I just remembered I have to wipe the blood off the bonnet as well.

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.....expletive deleted.....!! What just hit my head? There's blood pouring from a wound and a lump is starting to form.
Was it a bird, was it a plane, was it superman? It was a bird. Specifically, a magpie and, you're travelling in spring. Why did you get hit? The word "unlucky" springs readily to mind. It took me almost fifty years before one got me but, as you can tell, you never forget it.
They are actually mating and the urban myth has it that males testes swell to 10 times their normal size which makes them very aggro. Their testes-like equipment is actually inside their body and doesn't swell that much. What does happen is their testosterone levels increase tenfold. However, only 15% actually swoop and attack people, which I must admit, is little consolation when you've just been hit.
At some schools children have to wear upturned ice cream buckets on their heads during the mating season.
This may start as early as July 31st and continue until late October.
Normally they are a very friendly bird and you can even get them to feed from your hand. They are black and white and the shiny ones are the males and the ones who look like they've just been dusted are the females.
Magpie stories are legend in Australia as they are extremely intelligent. They have actually taught themselves to kill and eat the liver of cane toads, probably Australia's worst introduced pest. When you consider that eating any other part of the cane toad will result in death, this learned activity is extraordinary.

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Yes, they are primaeval, yes, they will eat you (after they've stored you in an underwater burrow to rot for a while), and yes, most people want to see one.
Bland though it may be to some, without question the safest way is a crocodile farm. They can be found mostly in Queensland (Steve Irwin's is on the Sunshine Coast just north of Brisbane) and the Northern Territory.
If you want to see them in the wild, you may wish to take a river cruise, especially in the Northern Territory, where crocs expect you and will leap out of the water to take pieces of meat.
If you want to see one by yourself, the risk is yours. Going into their territory, i.e. the water, is asking for trouble, as several tourists have found to their horror.
They are a protected species so shooting them is not an option.
If you're on a riverbank you're not safe either. Remember, a lot of their prey is snatched off just such a spot.
Also, saltwater crocs can be found way out at sea and way inland. Don't think you're safe fifty kilometres either side of the coastline, you're not.
You have been warned.

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Actually this might only be an excuse to use one of my favourite shots again!
Snakes - yes, Australia has them. Looking for the world's most poisonous? Forget your fer de lance, chuck your cobra, run past your rattler - the top ten in the world are right here! The good news is your chances of seeing them are miniscule, let alone getting bitten by one. Just as I say that I read that nearly 3,000 people are bitten each year and over 400 are given antivenom. If you do get bitten, keep a pressure bandage on the wound and movement to a minimum till you get help. The really bad ones have two fangs. Not that you'll want to be that close to check them mind, but I thought it may be interesting. The semi-poisonous have four (such as the common red-bellied black) and the pythons? Well, you'll be more worried about their body than their teeth as they kill by squeezing you.
If you do go bush and actually fluke a sighting, then the black and the diamond python are the two you will most likely encounter. Unless you actually stand on a black he will be getting out of your way.
The ones you really should fear are the brown. They can get aggressive (I've seen one aggressive and it's not reassuring), but, in over 50 years I've still only seen about 10 in the wild, even though they're often nearby.
There's a saying that everywhere in Australia you're within 100 metres of a snake except in the big cities.
Some other nasties are the taipan, mulga and deaf adder (often mis-named death adder). The latter got its name because it was believed it caused deafness in its victims.
One key thing to remember is - stay still. They react to movement. If you're calm they'll ignore you. Except for an angry brown where you might want to offer a hat or a bag as an alternative bite but, like I say, your chances are less than one in a a hundred thousand.
Stay lucky!

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As soon as you leave the city you can just about guarantee you will be bugged. No, nothing to do with ASIO, the CIA or the KGB, just your everyday insect type thingy hanging onto the grille of your motor vehicle.
At times they can be prolific, such as this example during a locust plague, or when the bogong moths are spawning (you can eat them, but probably not the ones off the bonnet) or when the midges are in profusion. Take heart though, it's the reason we have such prolific bird life...............and you can get them as a hood ornament too if you're not careful!

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I could have subtitled this Don't feed the birds.
The problem is, it only encourages them. Currawongs are the worst. They're a medium sized predominantly black bird with a large beak and they will literally swoop down and take the food out of your mouth. I know someone who was just starting to eat a pie at Cradle Mountain (Tassie) when one dived and grabbed it.
In the ever-popular Blue Mountains they are notorious and you can see a picture of one taking a sandwich from my son's hand in my Blue Mountains pages.
Sparrows used to come and peck the scraps up at a cafe I used to dine at in Tamworth and mynahs ate everything in sight up on Queensland's Gold Coast at a golf resort I once stayed at.
I've also hand fed crimson rosellas, lorikeets and pelicans.
My latest experience however was a shock. Whilst up at Port Stephens (a must-see if you're in Oz), three of us were dining at the old lighthouse. Suddenly, as Rosemarie actually had a fork in a salmon pattie and was cutting it with a knife, down swooped a kookaburra (related to the kingfisher). Its feet smacked her fresh mugaccino and it sprayed all over her clothes while its beak ploughed into the pattie.
Alfred Hitchcock must be rolling in his grave. "The Birds" had nothing on what we've got to offer in real life in Oz!

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I experienced the above within 24 hours of each other.
The quote is a line from a classic Australian poem by Dorothea Mackellar, lamenting how, though England is nice, she misses her homeland.
On the north coast of N.S.W. they had been experiencing drought for years. Water restrictions were in place, fields were parched, stock couldn't be sent for adjistment because over 90% of N.S.W. was drought declared.
Then, in the space of 2 days, they had the wettest October for 30 years!
Needless to say, there were floods and Bellingen, being a flood-prone area, was the main one hit.
The Bellinger River burst its banks, as it had done 3 years earlier, and bridges and fields disappeared beneath a vast blanket of mud laden water.
In this shot a local is being rowed home along where the street normally is. The canoe later came back and took his son home as well.
For more shots, see my Coffs Harbour pages.

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The car had more dust on it than any other vehicle I had ever been in. Everything I touched sent a puff of beige drifting through the near still air. As the spare dropped from beneath the chassis or as the affected wheel nuts were turned, clouds of the stuff made me walk away seeking some relief. Bits of the talcum fine stuff were all over my black work trousers. It was awful but eventually the offending wheel was changed and I went and washed and drank from the clear and refreshing waters of the Nymboida River, famous for white water rafting.
Moving on I prayed that I wouldn’t get another flat and it was less than 10 kilometres of dirt later when I nearly stopped the car and got out and kissed the bitumen. A vestige of commonsense held me back. That, and the fact that I was running late for my next appointment in Maclean.
Keen viewers will note the ring of dust around the car, slowly accumulating every time I bumped the car.
This is the type of thing that occurs to me more frequently than I like, particularly since the advent of tubeless tyres. Make sure you have all the relevant tools before you head bush.
If you'd like to read the wonderful places I saw before I got here, check out my New England pages.

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It's 2007 and two people have died within two months of snake bite. One was a teenage youth and the other an experienced snake handler.
Why did they both die? Why did they both have to die.
They did one thing in common. One thing you are told never to do. DON'T PICK UP SNAKES!
The youth had a brown snake, of the type I took a picture of here on the Great Ocean Road, and tried to wrap it in his T-shirt.
The handler picked up a relatively harmless snake but was bitten and suffered an allergic reaction to the bite.
I can't emphasise enough - leave them alone and they will leave you alone.

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