Information not fun

[tascoast]

Drop bears do indeed live on in the national consciousness as a means to pull the leg of visitors, indicting acceptance of said visitors, I believe, into the irreverent delights of living 'out bush' or in the never never, beyond the black stump, out whoop whoop even, where actual crocodiles and spiders and snakes and occasional scorpions can actually pose some risk, usually the former up towards the tropics....oh and the ocean stingers there too that make it tricky to swim safely at the beach/

[JmaCWQ]

Luckily, Downunder is rabies-free.

Here you'd likely find a brush-tail possum, roughly the size of a solid, compact cat, going through your scraps, running on the roof, or in the roof, if unlucky.

It's the drop bears that you really gotta look out for though.

We still get the Rabies treatments here, we have the Australian Bat Lyssavirus which is closely related to the Rabies virus apparantly

Christmas 2013 I had the pleasure of being bitten by a flying fox while untangling it from a barbed wire fence, got me on the thumb through a hole in a welding glove.
Had the full treatment, from memory it was several weeks before the course of injections was finished.
The first injection hurt a bit as it was put in the bite site on my thumb & the amount of fluid required swelled my thumb considerably, though it returned to normal size after a day or so.
They explained the idea was to get as much of the injection fluid around the bite location as possible to try and stop any active virus spreading from that spot.
Probably would have been happier doing something else at the time I guess, though it seems my sacrifice was worth it as I'm still here, and the flying fox survived

[Stevo]

Luckily, Downunder is rabies-free.

Here you'd likely find a brush-tail possum, roughly the size of a solid, compact cat, going through your scraps, running on the roof, or in the roof, if unlucky.

It's the drop bears that you really gotta look out for though.

But you've got venomous snakes and spiders..... a fair number of them.

and white sharks and cone snails and blue ringed octopi and this thing. Yeah, no canine rabies, but still...bat rabies. At least all the cockatoos can do is bite your finger off if they get mad, or ruin your hearing with screeching. They haven't learned how to dismantle your car like the Kea parrot.

Or you need a wild coyote--the male alpha of the yotes that still accompany me on my walks through the park almost every night (that's the female in the avatar shot) chases every trash panda he sees up the nearest tree. The two females in the pack seem willing to live and let live, though.

[JmaCWQ]

... and this thing...

Aah yes the good old stinging tree, they were fairly common where I grew up, never had the pleasure of brushing up against one though, thankfully parents educated us at an early age.
Stood on a Bullrout in a river many kilometres from the coast when I was about 10 years old.
I will remember that until the day I die, that was real pain that was.

We also have the Box Jellyfish that's painful sting is apparently second to none...

Great place to live Australia, provided you stay indoors

[tascoast]

You gotta watch the stinging trees up Atherton Tablelands way, with lawyer vines always present to impede the unwary bush traveler.

To be fair, you can happily camp almost anywhere in Australia, except by northern tropical rivers, billabongs (waterholes) or oceans where crocs might lurk (quite a defined and limited region all said), and be confident no bears or canines or feline fanged beasties will devour you and your sleeping bag like a giant spring roll.

It's deaths of surfers that fall foul of sharks which seem to predominate in practice.

[Stevo]

Yeah, like North America, most of Australia's megafauna went extinct when humans arrived, by some strange coincidence. Things like gigantic venomous monitor lizards and marsupial "lions", for example, along with even bigger crocs than you have now. No wonder the little guys are so tough.

[tascoast]

Human occupation in Australia is currently dated to at least 65,00 years ago, with around 20,000 years overlap with megafauna extinction, recent evidence suggests. There's a lot of debate and much more evidence to collect, but a significant drying of the continent over this time span has largely created the arid and dry ecosystem dominating much of the continent. That alone may account for many changes in flora and fauna, perhaps globally to some extent too.