Insecty

I ended up with 2 weeks work for the furniture removals and not bad money at 25 buckaroonies an hour.

There’s something wholesome about manual labour that really lets you appreciate a beer at the end of a hard days graft. I always have enjoyed this sort of job too, as it’s amazing what people collect and what you see in their houses!!

We were unloading one ladies gear and she had some quite large potted plants which the truck driver, Malcolm, had rolled up to the edge of the trailer to be taken down into the house. I wrapped my arm around the plant pot and picked it up, as Malc shouted:

‘Watch out for the re…,’

Then just stamped on my arm – bastard! It turns out there was a redback he’d just killed. I don’t care what anyone says, those are pretty big spiders and they’re UGLY! He made me feel much better when he told me

‘They don’t kill you when they bite, they just make you sick…’

‘For weeks…’

‘And you get necrosis of the skin….! ‘

Only in Australia!

Bill Bryson had it right when he mused in his book, ‘Why is it that the poisonous insects and reptiles in Oz are lethal enough to kill a Bull Elephant when all they eat are insects and rodents respectively. It’s a bit of overkill…’

I really agree with him!

Luckily though, nothing happened to yours truly, until I was moving out a work bench from some bloke’s garage. After the last experience, I had a good root through the webs, cleaning them out and what not. Malc and I had just lifted the bench when I felt something crawl slowly onto and then across my hand. It was all I could do to not drop the table, so after gingerly putting it down and turning over my hand – there we were – another fucking redback on the back of my hand. It got flicked off and killed in quick order and it was only then I broke out in a sweat and started shaking – started shitting myself actually because I was expecting to feel the bite it’d inflicted which I was convinced it had because of my sweating and shaking! After about 5 cigarettes off the belt and loads of piss taking from the crew, I felt calm enough to get back to it! It’s amazing though how you imagine all sorts of things crawling all over you and the rest of that day was an uncomfortable misery! I can look back now and laugh, but I really hate spiders – as Phil would say – ‘With a passion you can only dream of..!’ Still, that’s been my closest scrape with death in Australia thus far!! Apart from having to watch Aussie TV, which induces death by boredom, but that’s another story…