I don’t suppose anyone is now unaware that huge areas of Queensland have been inundated. It looks and sounds pretty horrendous. But water is not the only problem some of these communities have to face: there are snakes and crocs.
There is a report of one couple who must have felt relatively ‘safe’ because their house and grounds, roughly the size of a football pitch, were on high ground. They weren’t that secure – at least a thousand snakes decided to head for the ‘safety’ of their property – and I’m worried about a couple of cane toads sitting on my patio tonight… ? 🙂
There’s a BBC report here, which has a good video report on Rockhampton, where the river is expected to peak tonight.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Could you not send a care package to those reptiles? Contents: two cane toads.
As a nature lover, I should not say this, but sometimes I am inclined to think that the only good snake is a dead one. Same for crocs. And mosquitoes.
Hello Boa,
And we think we’ve got problems over here. Not 100% sure of my facts, as usual, though I’m sure Australia has a substantial majority of snakes in the top ten most deadliest. No matter what you think about them, snakes do take a good picture and indeed starred in a great picture: Snakes on a Plane.
They’ve been showing the turmoil on the news here since it started Boa, and yesterday we saw the snakes. They’ve been interviewing some of the residents too, I feel for each of them. I will never complain about a bit of snow again, flood water must be horrific. You only have spill a cupful on the floor and you have a mess on your hands, so what these floods are like, is unimaginable.
Yup thats pretty bad Boa,
Another thing that really grips my fudge is the total disregard for the disease lurking in all that floodwater. OK its worse for you guys because there are deadly animals lurking in there, but the beeb reports there and even here in places like Cumbria, and Yorkshire, insist on showing the idiotic reporter stood up to his/her knees in what can only be described as a soup of every toxic biological ailment known to man.
Hopefully the threat of being eaten alive will prevent these morons from continued practice, if not one can always hope to add one to the scoreboard for Mr Croc. Should make excellent U-Tube footage.
Been following events because as val says, it’s been very well reported here. I must say the snakes bit of this gives me the willies, it’s bad enough seeing your home and possessions swallowed up by brown sludge without worrying if something nasty is going to slither up to the same pice of dry land you are sitting on. I read one report that a woman had shot 26 brown snakes in one day! I know when I went for a walk on the wild side in the Blue Mountains with MrsOMG, my eyes were bugging out of my head with every step I took.
Sipu
I’d love to. I’ve been trying to find a way of getting ridding of the toads, since they are an environmental disaster – yet another case of the ‘no problems – she’ll be right’ mentality which has been (as far as I and a number of others are concerned) the major contribution to water shortages and other difficulties here.
The only advice the Queensland Government can offer is the we should remember they are ‘God’s Creatures’, and a cricket bat is inhumane. So we should catch the little critters and put them in our fridges or freezers where they will ‘drift off to sleep’ and die peacefully. Well that’s the drift of the web-site says, if not an entirely accurate quote of what it does say.
They do not specify whether I should allow them to hop around in my fridge or freezer until they die or whether I should pop them in a plastic bag first so that it’s not the cold but lack of air that kills ’em off. It’s all irrelevant ‘cos they are not going in either appliance…
JW We do indeed have a large number of the world’s deadliest snakes. However, the only time I’ve seen one (in over twenty years) was on a road in the back of beyond, where we had obviously startled a snake – so much that it had frozen upright stiff with fear. In my innocence (and ignorance – I’d only been here a few weeks) I leapt out of the car to take a photo at a distance of a couple of feet… It was only after I got back in the car that I was told it was the deadliest snake in the world.
Val There’s one place, St George, that is facing flooding for the second time within nine months. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/05/3106483.htm?section=justin.
That’s a bit wimpish Ferret. I thought you were made of tougher stuff. If the Beeb reporter is ‘brave’ enough to stand in the water, good on him. What irritates me is reporters who make a fuss of taking every precaution to avoid the hazards that the locals take for granted.
Sipu,
Wimpish my arse. Some poor sod i.e. yours truly has had to pay to put the gurning eejit in there. Are we all so dim that we do not know what flooding is until we see some prat stood in it? Then should said pillock contract dissentry, cholera, ecoli whateva, we will have to be sympathetic while the fool becomes a burden to the health system and risks spreading infection to those who had the good sense to keep the frick out of the diluted sewage.
Its the same when they get on the 6 o’clock news telling us that if our journey is not life or death essential we should not venture out, doing so from some remote OB location just in case we didn’t know what bloody snow was. Now I don’t give a flying fornicate if they get stuck and die of hypothermia for no good reason, but if some other poor soul should suffer a genuine threat because the emergency services were busy dealing with a stranded talking head. Grrrrrr.
Well, Ferret, we will have to agree to disagree.
Ferret
You do have a point. But, a) we don’t have open sewers to contaminate the water to the extent of places like Columbia, b) most Australians do have the savvy to understand that the water might be contaminated and c) there are public notices that everyone should and can get all the vaccinations that they might need.
OMG
I think the biggest worry will be what might decide to stay nice and snug in one’s cupboards once the water has gone.
Since I came here, I’ve worked on the principle that I am bigger and, thus, more threatening than most of the wild life here and if I make enough noise they will run away from me. That philosophy has also included the premise that, since ‘I’ have never, traditionally, been on the ‘menu’ of most animals none of them are likely to attack me for the sheer delight of seeing me dead – most animals only kill for food or if attacked. Nonetheless, I did add a note of caution to my theory after I found a wet crocodile slide a mere 20 feet away from where I had just taken a skinny-dip in a billabong…
Boa,
You misunderstand me. The locals have to be there, they have little choice. The attitude of the news in its dumbing down reportage is that when we see pictures of homes submerged in disease/snake/crocodile infested water and residents being evacuated by tin boat from their bedroom windows, the public just won’t get it unless we see some prat who has been flown halfway round the world standing in the water.
There is no real need for the pillock to be there, local agencies have all the photos and footage we could ever need. All the reporter and the broadcast team does is get in everyone elses way.
Ferret
I did indeed misunderstand you – and you are quite right. I, too, get mightily peeved at reporters who think that they have to ‘share’ the experience of locals to present what is happening.
Yes Boa,
Add to the fact that these animals must be somewhat alarmed at their sudden change in environment. In such an agitated state it would not take much to provoke a response. Like Val said, the people here who were up in arms about a little bit of snow definately need a generous slice of perspective.
It must be horendous.
Nearly as definitely horrendous as my spelling. 🙂
Stoopid mustelid.
I know I said I would agree to disagree, but I am truly baffled by the last two comments from Ferret #11 and Boa #12. Surely, the reason we watch television news is that we are able to get more of a feeling of just what it is like for those on the ground, whether they be troops in Afghanistan, mountaineers climbing Mt Everest, starving Ethiopians, or flood victims in Queensland. The closer reporters are to the action the more real the event becomes. War reporters of any form are almost by definition taking risks. Are we to rely on written reports of military personnel to find out what is going on in Basra?
If one takes the argument of expense, which is what Ferret seems to be doing, we might just as well say we do not need live TV coverage of sport because of the cost involved in presenting it. We should just rely on the written reports of those who are there.
The fact is, TV news attracts commercial advertising to pay for it. While the BBC may not operate in that way, it has to compete with other networks. If it cannot produce the same level of reporting as ITV, Sky or CNN say, it will lose it viewers and it might as well close shop. But that is another debate.
Sipu,
I give up. You are obviously one of those morons who doesn’t understand what a flood is unless you see some quaffeured idiot standing in some water.
There are a lot of aerial pictures of the devastation and excellent footage of rescues being carried out by the emergency services. Some donkey in a pair of wellies taking up half the screen because he/she assumes we are more interested in them than the event is not part of the solution, just another problem for everyone struggling to cope to get around.
The expense is but a small part of it Sipu, my point is that these talking heads are not ‘bravely’ putting themselves in peril so that we the public might be better informed. They are servicing their own vanity and exposing themselves to uneccessary risks, which, should they go tits up will require the valuable attention of those already working balls out to help the real victims.
Sipu
Way past my bed-time, but I'll answer your last comment before departing to the land of Nod.
Of course one needs live coverage – however, for 'outsiders' to imply, by standing in the water or whatever, that they understand what 'locals' are experiencing is a total nonsense and actually disrespectful.
Everyone knows that these reporters can jump on a plane out of the war or disaster zone and go back to their safe and comfortable pads in wherever they live. They are not facing the loss of their livelihood, their property, their memories nor having to face rebuilding their lives from nothing. Nor, in the case of places like Afghanistan, are they facing the loss of their lives. In my opinion, they trivialise the real suffering of people in those situations.
Report – yes please. Try to kid everyone that you understand – don’t even begin to try.
Into everyone’s life a little rain must fall and Queensland is just showing off, would be a rather callous view of the natural disaster which Queenslanders are living through. However in Moray, we are subjected to regular flooding where hundreds of homes are inundated, and residents have to be moved to higher ground, so we are no strangers to the consequences. We are still waiting for a hugely expensive flood prevention program to be implemented. Whether it happens to 500 people or 50,000 it is still a tragedy to those affected.
But on the global scale of these things, at the last count reported on the BBC there have been three deaths due to the flooding itself. In terms of loss of human life in natural disasters this comes rather far down the scale. Meanwhile nearly a year after a devastating earthquake killed more than 200,000 people in Haiti, and destroyed Port-Au-Prince, more than 1.5 million people remain homeless amid a challenging and slow recovery process.
Certainly structural and property damage will be significant in Queensland, which has attracted news attention – if you add snakes and crocodiles to the story, it becomes irresistible to the media. If it was my house under six feet of floodwater and faeces, and surrounded by poisonous snakes, I would be similarly exercised to those suffering presently, and they have my sympathy in such difficult circumstances. Looking at the news footage, it reminds me a little of the New Orleans disaster, although with far less loss of life so far; let’s hope it stays that way.
Will Insurance companies attempt to take the line that as a natural disaster it will not be covering rebuilding and recovery costs? That would be par for the course for these corporate crocodiles, not to mention the concerns of borrowers with negative equity on home loans…
Ferret, your posts do not warrant a response.
Boa, of course we outsiders cannot experience what the locals are suffering, but one can, as I said, ‘get closer’, to understanding. That is what reporters are trying to do. Any reference to their appearance, where they come from, or the fact that their own lives are not at risk, is irrelevant. It stands to reason that the more pictures, interviews, sounds, accounts, even smells etc that can be conveyed to those of us who are not there to witness the floods first hand, the more likely we are to gain a better idea of the depths of suffering of those who are. To argue otherwise is, to be frank, foolish. The reporters have at least been there, which is more than Ferret or I have done, and I suspect is more than you have done.
I did not actually say ‘get closer’ but I think it was implied by my use of two phrases ‘more of a feeling’ and ‘more real the event becomes’, in my comment #15.
Grrr Sipu,
For someone who agreed to differ you are insufferable.
What exactly gives you ‘more of a feel’ for the real event exactly?
Option a)
Aerial footage showing the true extent of the flooding, local testimony from the victims and emergency services mixed with some expert opinion from specialists back in the studio.
or
Option b)
A picture of a news ‘personality’ in wellies in some water talking condescending gibberish?
As for “The reporters have at least been there, which is more than Ferret or I have done, and I suspect is more than you have done.” Allow me to expand, last year we had some very nasty floods in Cumbria, that is but a short jaunt from my own abode. The rescue operations were widespread and ongoing, luckily very few people simply “went there”. Those that did were turned away unless they had the skills, time or expertise to be of some use.
Anthropologically speaking (!) I suppose this is why homo sapiens tended to congregate away from places where beasties lived. These natural disasters really bring home the awfulness of the ‘natural state of things’.
Fewwet: it would be amusing, however, if the reporter would be encircled by snakes, managed to free her or himself, and then get chomped in half by a crocodile.
Boadicea: hopefully things get back in order soon. I lived through a flood before and it is horrible.
Being a great connoisseur of floods and having been flooded myself too often to count in the Towy valley. I offer you the following observations.
Although very spectacular in the breadth of flooding, they really are neither deep nor fast flowing in most areas. People are walking around comparatively easily, that is not possible in active water believe you me! In Katrina people died in their own attics, climbing up to escape the floods and then being trapped and unable to burst through their roofs, the water was 15′ deep in places, (seriously nasty!)
There is no need for sludge in the house, all you have to do is sandbag the orifices, this filters the water and makes clean up a lot more easy.
I doubt they will have heavily contaminated water, a there is a paucity of people in the region and it is not a heavily farmed area in animal husbandry, some dairying but far more arable.
Most things can be salvaged by bleach in a home, there is no need at all to throw the contents of your home away. I have even salvaged fridges and washing machines from flood water to render them usable again.
From the look of the construction a lot of dry walling will have been used, that will not survive, it crumbles, real plaster will survive but it would never have been used in those houses.
The real news is the novelty of these floods, the drama of the breadth, good footage for TV. I don’t suppose for one minute the average Australian is getting too excited about it all they do not seem to be the type.
The real genuine gobsmacking news is the invasion of snakes and crocs! One thing getting a bit wet and discommoded another fighting off hordes of poisonous snakes!
I have to say on a personal basis I never quite understood why the place was ever inhabited but then it has every attribute that I find intolerable! No doubt a lot would consider Wales in the same vein!!! Each to his own, but I would rather be dead than live in Australia.
I have had this snake business in the house just once in Dallas, 4′ long lurking under the fridge and popped out whilst making morning tea! More than enough, one gallon of milk all over the floor and we moved to Washington pretty bloody quickly after that! There are no snakes in Washington, only State in the Union that has none. It doesn’t `have a lot of things except mountains, rain and wind, just like Wales only bigger! IE fit for human habitation in my book.
Each to his own eh?
I saw several snakes in Australia when we lived out there…. generally we were led to believe that they would usually choose to go in a different direction, but were most dangerous when cornered… as they are currently pudhed to higher ground to stay dry. Doesn’t appeal!