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When we were in the US my wife and I were talking to a couple from California on a train trip. They asked where we were from and we said Australia, at which point they launched in to questions about how dangerous it was. We told them all that stuff was just a fun joke, and really it was no different to living anywhere else. There are a couple of dangerous spiders but that's about it.

They wouldn't hear it. The idea of there being a couple of dangerous spiders alone was enough for them to continue believing it was a harsh place to live, and then there were all the snakes and everything else.

So I pointed out that California has a bear on its state flag. A freaking bear. That won't give you a nasty bite and keep you in hospital for a week, it will mash you into goo. And yet no-one would think of California as a dangerous place to live.

They still didn't really get it.

It's about the unknown almost fantastical quality.

Bears and Cougar's are common knowledge to us.

The fact that a platypus has a sting that is so painful you'd want to die to end it... that's not.

 Orlanth wrote:
Australia. The only nation to lose a war against rodents!

Losing, not lost. We're still in this thing.

Also, didn't the whole of Europe lose like 50 million people to the disease that rats brought with them? While the rabbits might hold a territorial advantage, Australian casualties have been pretty light so far.

 sebster wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Australia. The only nation to lose a war against rodents!

Losing, not lost. We're still in this thing.

Also, didn't the whole of Europe lose like 50 million people to the disease that rats brought with them? While the rabbits might hold a territorial advantage, Australian casualties have been pretty light so far.

Pretty sure he's talkng about cane toads.

I, for one, welcome our new cotton tailed overlords!

Also, as always when this type of topic comes up...

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/australia.html

 djones520 wrote:
It's about the unknown almost fantastical quality.

Bears and Cougar's are common knowledge to us.

The fact that a platypus has a sting that is so painful you'd want to die to end it... that's not.

And for us it's the other way around. Bears are amazing creatures, while a redback is just a spider with an ugly web that will bite if you act like an idiot sticking your fingers into every nook and cranny.

Fun fact about the redback - it's probably never killed anyone. A fair few people died after being bitten by one, but the spider bite itself probably isn't fatal. It's just incredibly painful and lasts months, which meant doctors treated the bite by treating the pain, which for a long time meant all kinds of opiates... and putting people on enough opiates to numb the pain for long enough ended up being fatal for a lot of patients. Since the antidote was discovered, people haven't even died to that.

The actual, really dangerous thing is the heat and the isolation. Every summer a stupid German tourist or two heads out in to the outback, gets lost and dies or almost dies.