Koalas

[WhitewaterWoman]

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Yes!

Outdated: I forgot to ask you about the venomous snakes as cassowaries of Queensland, south of the Tropic of Capricorn.

 

[Outdated]

Yes!

Outdated: I forgot to ask you about the venomous snakes as cassowaries of Queensland, south of the Tropic of Capricorn.

Cassowaries won't be seen south of the tropic, in fact you'll have to go a long way further north if you want to see one in the wild, and even then they're quite rare.

Snakes we have in plenty throughout the entire country, over 140 different species documented so far and of those over 100 are venomous. You'll hardly ever see a venomous snake unless you go looking for them though, they have no interest in humans and try very hard to not be seen by humans. The only time a snake will attack a human is if it feels trapped and in danger. 99.9% of all snake bites happen to people trying to kill the snake.

Pythons are a different matter, they don't have much fear of humans and anyone north of Brisbane is used to them coming in to the house. They're harmless to humans but they can sense rats from many metres away even if the rats are hiding in your roof cavity.

Some of our pythons are really pretty and it's always wonderful to see them.

 

[AuAL]

You don’t have to go north of Brisbane - I had a 2m python living in my roof for quite a while. (One morning it decided to poke its head through the exhaust vent in the shower recess ceiling to have a bit of a look, while I was having a shower. Face to face with about 1m of python hanging down. It saw me and rapidly retracted.) My daughter kept chooks, the rats came after the feed, the pythons came after the rats. One night we heard quite a kerfuffle coming from the chook pen - found a large python chowing down on one of them. We took the rest of them indoors for the night.

When I was a young lad living in Newcastle, a red-bellied black snake decided to investigate the primary (grade) school tuckshop. A couple of teachers had to dispatch it. (For those OS, this is in the suburbs of Australia’s sixth largest city.)

 

[WhitewaterWoman]

215 pound female python in Florida.

This could probably fix your Koala problem.

 

[Outdated]

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215 pound female python in Florida.

This could probably fix your Koala problem.

Our biggest is the Scrub Python, but Olive Pythons and Carpet Pythons aren't much smaller.

 

[AuAL]

Australia's biggest killer is actually the Sun.

Here's my next week's weather forecast. Although it's not exactly comfortable I'm glad to see it because this represents a normal Adelaide summer. Our weather has been a bit weird for the last few years and I'm happy to see more normal patterns returning.

Remember that Adelaide is on the southern coast, it's a lot hotter further north.

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Directly north, yes. Go far enough NE and you get to us:

Weird we’re not expecting more rain. Massive flooding NW from here.
But @Outdated is right - here the sun is not your friend. Annual skin cancer checks are just commonsense.

 

[Forest Cat]

I had a 2m python living in my roof for quite a while. (One morning it decided to poke its head through the exhaust vent in the shower recess ceiling to have a bit of a look, while I was having a shower. Face to face with about 1m of python hanging down. It saw me and rapidly retracted.)

Normally, the person in the shower would think "oh crap, a snake!" and run away. But the snake saw you and thought "oh crap, an Australian!" and ran away. Australia is different.