We've also been scouring op shops (those boots below? $5! Bargain) and salvage yards for useful bits and pieces to help us along the way.
Yesterday, Dan and I spent seven hours doing first aid training, mainly to brush up our spider and snake bite skills. We know there'll be plenty of brown snakes around where we're headed - we've seen their skins all over the place, not to mention the snake fencing, snake repellers and other precautions used by locals with varying degrees of success.Aside from the ubiquitous (but lethal) browns, there's the taipans (the world's most venomous snake -definitely one you don't want to meet on the way to the wood pile), death adders, tiger snakes and the rest. There are 11 venomous snake species living in South East Queensland, apparently. Isn't that great? Lucky us.
I am sure most of us have stories of run-ins with snakes through our lives and I know I'm soon to add more stories to my own list. I just hope, when I do, they're 'spotted one from the comfort of my veranda' stories not 'picked one up thinking it was a stick' type stories.
Care to share your best snake story?
hello edwina! i've bookmarked your new site! i can't wait to explore - it's lovely because for some reason, work is not blocking the photos on this site as it does with your other one. so i can see what you are taking on every day from my work desk, instead of when i go home :-)
ReplyDeletegood luck with it all! XXX
Thanks E! I think because I've traditionally uploaded my photos to Flickr and posted the HTML in blogger, but on this blog I'm just using the blogger photo upload feature (they've improved it since I last tried)!
DeletePS - i've just updated my links on my site to yours. is that a jacarnada in the pictures below? i remember them from when i grew up in sydney ... wonderful trees.
ReplyDeleteSure is. The jacarandas are out in force at the moment. I love when the flame trees come out too and then everywhere's an explosion of purple and red trees for a few weeks. Beautiful!
DeleteOh gawd! I didn't know you had so many lethal snakes up there, for some reason I thought that was mostly Tassie. Didn't realise you had tiger snakes too. And all those shed skins - creepy!!
ReplyDeleteI won't tell you then that my cousin in Brissie was recently bitten, in her own home, by a 2.5 metre snake which was living in her kitchen cupboard! Non-venomous thankfully, but scared the crapola out of her.
x
No, please don't tell me that. I really don't want to know. Shudder. I thought the thing with Tassie snakes was that they're all venomous - ie, if you see a snake in Tassie, you know it could kill you. Up here we've got harmless pythons and tree snakes and so on. But I think we've got more lethal ones too. Yuck.
DeleteWe have had three snakes in our house in inner suburban Brisbane- all brought in by our cat. Thanks for that. One was deposited under our bed and we did not find it until we discovered the smell. The others were alive and dispatched with a shovel on one occasion and by me under a tagine trap when Liongirl was a baby and Legoman was overseas. They were all small but were all black and scary looking. Totally petrifying when you have a crawling baby in the house too. At least you know all your varieties now, very wise to do a first aid course when you are not living so close to a big hospital as well. So exciting about all your plans, I love scouring demo yards- have you been to my favourite at Rocklea- they get some great stuff. We have windows, doors and floorboards from down there all squirrelled away waiting for the work to begin. mel x
ReplyDeleteThe Rocklea demolition place is actually where we went on Saturday. It was pouring with rain so we couldn't explore too much. Oh well, we'll have to go again soon.
DeleteThree snakes in your place in town? That's a little terrifying, actually.
How exciting!!...lots of snakes around here too. We've had a couple of run ins....our dog loves catching them....have had 5 or 6 browns...only babies so far. Charlie's old preschool gets shut down quite often thanks to snakes sunning themselves on the slides etc.....the secret is to make a lot of noise, but don't thump the ground, they love it!?......that's what an old farmer told me once.
ReplyDeleteAllison x
Can I just say I am crazy about your blog? My partner and I constantly check here for updates and look forward to every photograph.
ReplyDeleteI have no good snake stories, although I have many spider stories from the time I lived in Sydney (mostly the hilarity of young urban expats not knowing how to get Huntsman spiders out of their bathtub).
Oh, thank you so much! I loathe huntsman spiders, so it's not just an expat thing. I have a healthy respect for snakes but am not really scared of them, as such. Huntsmans and other spiders reduce me to a quivering mess. Silly really.
DeleteHi Edwina,
ReplyDeleteThank you for visiting my blog and leaving a comment. I love your blog, especially the pictures of derelict houses. If you haven't already done so, you should do an exhibition of them. They really are wonderful.
Snakes, well, there are plenty of them here in the Blue Mountains plus, we also have our very own 'Blue Mountains Funnel Web'. Aren't we lucky? Our youngest son, who spent 2 years as a jackaroo in remote NT and Qld has plenty of snake stories to tell. Trouble is, some stories just keep getting bigger and bigger each time he tells them!!!
Loving your new blog look Edwina!
ReplyDeleteThe boots are a good idea - do you have a set for Lucinda too?
You will certainly need them - and lots of gloves too.
We don't have many too nasties here despite being on acreage (I think just having dogs around keeps them at bay) but we do have a few resident carpet snakes. Having chooks adds to that I think as they just love baby chickens.
I do have one scary snake story too - going back a lot of years when I had horses on agistment at Anstead. It involved surprising a snake (prob just a python) curled up in a lantana bush. Advice: look out for snakes in lantana bushes!
My other advice would definitely be to get a cattle dog. Maybe even an older one rather than a pup. cheers Wendy
Thanks Wendy! We have gumboots for Lucinda, I might look at something sturdier though. We have a border collie currently but, to be honest, she's pretty useless at such things and is generally afraid of her own shadow. We were thinking maybe a feisty little Jack Russell. I might go check out the RSPCA and see what we find though.
DeleteYay! I bookmarked your new site awhile ago and today it is finally showing up in my bloglovin feed.
ReplyDeletehttp://the-old-post-office.blogspot.com.au/
Hi Edwina, finally came to blog from instagram. Snake advice: our (then) 7 year old daughter was bitten on a toe by a very small baby brown snake, enough to make her very ill (collapsed, fitted and rushed to hospital) as baby snakes give all they have in one bite, big ones take a couple of hits to give their full venom apparently. Anyhow, wide compression bandages really DO work, we had bandaged from the knee down at least twice, and then the ambulance man did from the groin down with a wide firm bandage x 2 and she nearly instantly began to feel better. Obviously had a night in ICU after we were flown out to Townsville getting anti venom and after a week of tiredness and recovery at home hasn't looked back. Since then we have installed a couple of SENTINEL snake repellers - I really DO think they work. I didn't realise one had gone flat and we sighted a brown couple of times, and since putting in a new battery, haven't seen it since. Although on the last sighting I was waving at it with a shovel so that might also have made it vacate the premises!
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