Australia seems to be regarded in awe by other places for our multitude of deadly creatures, and I can confess now that I was worried about what creatures might lurk here at Hill House. As I grew up on the other side of the country and had lived in towns and cities on this side, I was unfamiliar with the level of wildlife here, and expected that it would be frankly seething with animals, some of which would be keen to bite.
But I can report back that we have been fairly lucky with our encounters with dangerous Australian wildlife.
Snakes
The big one in Australia is snakes. and for our region that means black snakes and brown snakes. The black is bigger but timid, and the brown does most of the biting. I’ve grown up being cautious and always looking down, and so it was more for fear of losing our dog that I worried about them. Touch wood though we have seen few. Maybe a brown in the grass early on, which the dog mercifully just barked at to report it, and a black which quietly got out of the way one day down at the dam. We have lots of (poisonous, invasive) cane toads, which may have killed off a lot of them. There are lots of little whip snakes though, which hang around in the compost or in mouse holes in the grass, and are very keen to get away when disturbed, even if that means going right under your feet as you dance. We also have plenty of little tree snakes, again pretty harmless, but the snake we see most is the carpet python, and they are big enough to scare the willies out of any phobic.
Rats
Thing is, you want to have carpet snakes around, because they clean up rodents. We had quite a few mice and rats at first, but our friendly python has helped with the control campaign. As we eliminated rat nests from the grassy banks around the house we had a couple of nests under the bonnets of both cars and the tractor, so I got in the habit of checking to make sure there were no more. One day I found this snake there instead. As I didn’t need to drive I left it be for a couple of days, and then it was gone. So were the rats, never to return. We think also that a bit of a racket one night under the house must have been serial slaughter of a nest, as that commotion never returned either.
Jumping Ants
When you’re working in the garden particularly, it’s sensible to have some concern about insects and spiders, and I’ll cut straight to the chase. I had heard about jumping ants, and knew they live around here, but had that fear of the unknown having never experienced a sting. I had heard of people abandoning gardens for fear of them. I would class them as the worst beasty here. If I didn’t gear up I would be stung several times in the week, and the sting is painful and long-lived. For those who don’t know, they are about 2 cm long, aggressive, and literally jump onto you from the ground or vegetation, and sting as they land. The good news is you very quickly learn where the nests are (hmm) but also that covering up (tuck trousers into socks, wear gloves and long sleeves) gives you immunity unless you aren’t paying attention.
Spiders
Last but not least, spiders. I’m an arachnophobe, they just make me shiver and scream inside, and we are particularly blessed with a richness and sheer density of species here. The good news is that they are effectively harmless. Two beauties of note are the famous huntsman and the mouse spider, both of which are common.
The huntsman is a big scary spider, so it’s just as well it is timid. We are guaranteed to see them every time we move wood, rubbish or most things with dark spaces behind them. I took the photo of the one on the left this morning, just to show that we see them every day.
Then there are mouse spiders, related to the
deadly funnel webs but possibly the least aggressive spider out. They live in open burrows in the grass, and would rather just retreat. I often see a pair of their huge fangs glinting down a burrow when I’ve been hoeing off grass. They get the prize for looks. Fortunately too, the venom of funnel web spiders doesn’t seem to be serious to dogs, because these are just the sort of thing our fox terrier would go after.
Just working in the garden, though, the ground is crowded with several types of good-sized spider, all of which fortunately have no interest in attacking, but if you were truly squeamish it would be hell. Centipedes too are almost as common as earthworms when I’m digging.
From a wholistic viewpoint, though I’m glad to see all this activity. With so many predators around the chances are stacked against infestations of garden pests. We see big numbers of wasps, and they have the perplexing habit of building mud nests in anything that sits still for a while, but they are not interested in us at all, while they clean up any spiders or caterpillars they can find.
So a task for that big to-do list is to make some insect hotels – bamboo stacks and clay ‘bricks’ to try to get them where we would prefer them – out in the garden.