I’ve been so busy avoiding death by Antipodean fauna, and meteorology, that I’ve had little opportunity to report more. Actually, I’ve been racing around a bit, and enjoying it all, but at the end of the racing, I’ve been inclined to put my feet up and watch some rugby on the telly. The eating out has been in relative check, in part because the whole dining experience here, when you go to a restaurant versus a café, is a little over-the-top. Lots of nouveau-riche posturing here in Sydney, in particular. People certainly are happy to spend a fortune, too.

I’m about to head off to the University of Sydney to speak to the country’s foremost snake expert. Why people come to do that sort of research, escapes me. I’m sure it’s all a function of childhood fascinations, so maybe my lack of engagement as a child, in the interests of merely keeping my head low, that explains it. I spent some time last night looking through his large format, color-illustrated book of Australian snakes, and managed to spend a dreamless night digesting enough info to seem vaguely worth his while I hope.

I was in Brisbane for the weekend, visiting an old friend Andrew from my days at the Australian National University. He’s a lovely bloke, and his wife Olga is wonderful, too, but my purpose here is to report my very survival at the snake-infested wetlands South of Darwin. I did, however, almost die several hundred times from heat exhaustion. Bloody hell! The heat and humidity were unlike anything I'd experienced, and I hope never to experience them again. Much more brutal than New Orleans, even. As were the mozzies and billion other varieties of bugs out on the wetlands. Thankyou Jesus that I didn't decide to write about the bloke who does research into the snakes of the mangroves. Even the other hardcore snake scientists said they could never hack that, and that's saying something because almost all the postdocs quit doing even what the regulars are doing, because they can't hack it. Too nasty out there. The wetlands at Fogg Dam are thought to have the highest biomass of snakes, rats, crocodiles, and insects, in the world.

We did see plenty of snakes, mostly water pythons that the researcher I was visiting wasn't interested in, although a Swedish fellow and his Hungarian wife and colleague were scooping those up right behind us. My main subject, Greg, had seen a giant King Brown Snake the day before. It was of the magisterial variety that grow to over 10 feet in length, are as thick as a rower’s forearm, and have a particularly nasty way of making their point when threatened, or hungry. Step on one of those, and it is likely to clamp on and gnaw, and meanwhile inject half a litre of the most potent brew which hurts in some almighty kind of way, while also ensuring that its human victims start, basically, to rapidly disintegrate from the inside out. My research bloke also reported lots of death adders along the very road where I was staying, in the so-called Eden at Fogg Dam B&B, which hadn’t seen a giant King Brown in a year or so, although it did have a bloody huge guard dog of the kangal variety – the national dog of Turkey – which was up to my chin and is quite capable of doing to a human what it does to dingos that presume to wander onto the property. Needless to say, I was reminded moment by moment of my most key animal-relations adage: The only good dog is one that hasn’t ripped my throat open, yet.

Oh, and did I mention that the mosquitos out on the causeway through the wetlands were as thick as gravy with insects of myriad varieties. I got umpteen dozen in my eyes and up my nose, and have ended up with some strange kind of allergic reaction that has caused my eyes to become very bloodshot, and my eye sockets to resemble those of a badger. I’m about recovered, now, however.

Note to myself, and to whomever will heed these words: Don't become a field biologist, unless you're thinking of the denizens of particularly moderate climates.

I went on my last evening in the region into Darwin in search of a good Australian-foods restaurant and ate Chinese-style emu and crocodile, neither of which I can particularly recommend. The former was like a gamy version of, say, octopus, while the later tasted like well-ripened veal. In any case, it was simply too hot to be hungry, or to appreciate food.

I hate to make his whole entry a report on Australian fauna, as clichéd as that is, but I should at least admit to
Running over one goanna, quite by mistake. Those are large lizards that curiously lift their head when any predator or threat approaches – a car, for example. Unfortunately this one was in shadow on a road and failed to evade in a timely fashion. If they get scared, they’re likely to run up a tree, unless the nearest thing resembling a tree is a human being. This isn’t a particularly dangerous event, but imagine the surprise and horror of a 5 foot-long lizard running up your body and then digging in its claws as if clinging to a treetrunk in fright!

OK, enough animals, for now. I’m in Sydney – amazing place, really.

My latest travel plans have me back in Seattle on Friday November 7. Slide show then, if I can figure out how to unload from my new digital camera. And yes, there will be shots of 10-foot salt-water crocodiles leaping out of the infested Adelaide River east of Darwin. It’s all animals, animals, animals, up there. Lots of sea eagles and kites, too…