In my years of travelling the bush I can recall a few unexpected close encounters with wildlife. Some of them were pleasant and some of them downright scary.
Spiders
Isn’t it funny that such a small living thing could produce so much animosity towards it just because it is what it is?
I must admit that I can live without the Arachnida Family. I don’t think it is a fear of but rather a revulsion that lurks somewhere in the human brain.
It was mid winter in the Karoo, South Africa, and we were asleep in bed. It was bitterly cold outside, blowing gale and with a wind chill that brought the temp down to minus 10C. No wonder denizens of the night sought solace in the warmth of a brick house.
In a sleepy daze I told Judith to stop tickling my feet with her feet. She mumbled something indiscernible. And it happened two or three times during the night. In the morning however we got up and went to work as usual.
Later in the day our servant arrived and as it was a Monday, she stripped the bed. African women believe in all kinds of superstitions and spiders have some mystical relation to them…all bad.
She screamed at the top of her lungs and ran from the house. A nearby gardener came to the rescue and dispatched the Baboon
spider, which was the size of a person’s hand. Although not poisonous these spiders can inflict a nasty bite
Baboon spiders or tarantulas, as they are known outside Africa, are the giants of the
spider world. The last two leg segments resemble the finger of a baboon hence, the common name, baboon spiders.
Whilst still on spiders
I was driving the Toyota Landcruiser one night, while my long time school friend, Andries, was on the look out for spiders’ eyes reflections on the tarmac. He used to collect the spiders for university serum laboratories, so that they in turn, could develop antivenene for
spider bites.
Many people are unaware that those
bright little objects reflected in the vehicles lights at night at road level are actually
spider’s eyes.
This night we were driving along slowly on the tarmac and stopping frequently to catch a
spider. A glass jar is placed over the
spider, a light piece of cardboard is slid under the Arachnida and then the bottle is turned right way up and a perforated screw-top lid screwed on.
I am not quite sure what happened when we caught a Red Roman
spider.
Somehow the lid came loose as it was probably cross-threaded and rolled on its side. The Red Roman escaped, ran over my leg and disappeared under
seat.
Well, I managed to get out of the truck through the window without touching the sides, whilst the truck was still in motion. Andries was laughing so much he forgot there was no driver and the truck ran off the road, albeit gently and stopped against a bush.
We searched with the torch for the runaway
spider but to no avail. It was with great trepidation that I climbed back in behind the steering wheel to continue our search into the night and I was extremely glad to return
home after we had filled each bottle with a specimen.
We never did find that Red Roman.
Goanna
I was guiding a couple of birdwatchers on an off track adventure in
Kakadu around 1981. They camped in a tent and I swagged it out in the open.
The tropics can get cold in July, believe it or not, and sometime temps can drop down to 1 degree or lower. To stay warm I used to stoke the fire a bit, roll the swag out and
camp within reach of the warm heat waves.
Some time in the dead of night I stirred. I felt as if the world had caved in on me. The fire was only a faint glow and there was a presence on my chest. I have been an asthmatic for the greater part of my life and thought at first that I was having an asthma attack. But then I discovered that I was breathing
well.
I reached for my torch, as the night was pitch black, even with all the twinkling stars above. The illumination revealed an Old Man Goanna of about a metre in length, lying across my lower chest. Now these Goanna’s have hellishly long claws, so any movement, to get away from potential hurt, has to be gradual. I started to roll on to my side ever so gently and Old Man Goanna slid off gently and sauntered off into the night.
I did not sleep
well after that!!!
Saltwater Crocodile
In my time in the Top End of Australia a number of encounters with the reptilian giants, made my blood turn as cold as that of a crocodile.
I teamed up with another bloke and took tourists out on adventures on the
South Alligator River. I had the 4x4 and tourist numbers and the partner had a 5 metre fishing boat powered by twin 80hp outboard engines.
The boat was licensed to carry 9 passengers. We ran day trips from the
South Alligator River Bridge on the Arnhem Highway, downstream some 20km, to a bird nesting area.
This day saw us in and around the bird sanctuary, marvelling at new life of Spoonbills, Egrets and Cormorants. After a while I told my passengers I would run them up an inlet to look for some of the fabled large goanna’s, which were seen on the plains occasionally. Here I made a small tactical error, as the tide was going out. Not taking too much notice of what was happening I pressed on upstream into this narrow mangrove inlet. Around a bend in the creek I saw a very large crocodile swimming towards us, obviously heading to the deeper waters of the river. There wasn’t going to be space for us to pass each other and I made a hasty decision to turn the boat around. But I had to reverse the boat to turn it around. By this time all passengers on board were
well aware of what was happening. The inlet wasn’t wide enough and the boat got stuck sideways in the mud. The crocodile kept swimming towards us. It seemed that it was resolute to ram the boat but managed to dive underneath. Two
young ladies on board screamed as the dorsal fins of the crocodile scraped against the hull of the boat. They leapt away to the other side of the boat and the other passengers followed suit. I yelled at them not to do that as the boat came close to rolling on to its side and a mate and I strained like mad on the other side using our weight to counter balance the boat to keep it upright. Everything happened in slow motion. The boat stayed on even keel and the crocodile wriggled away heading downstream
There we were, stuck fast in the mud with the tide receding rapidly. I asked my passengers to all go to the back of the boat so as to get weight away from the bow and without further notice jumped overboard and sank up to my thighs, into the black, mangrove ooze. I attempted to lift the bow to shift it around so that we could get some draught again. It was working, but not enough. So I yelled at my mate, George, who was along as a tourist for this day, to help. He wasn’t too keen to jump in to saurian infested waters. I insisted quite vehemently and in colourful language that he had better help me quickly, and luckily he had a change of heart, and jumped into the mud with me. This took more weight out of the boat and we were able to pivot the boat on its stern and slowly turn it around by rocking it so that the bow was back in the water. It was an extremely messy and smelly event as we churned in the decayed mangrove mud but within minutes we were afloat again. George and I scrambled on board and the boat drifted with the outgoing tide. It my haste to get on board I relinquished one of my shoes to the mud. I thought at that moment that maybe in a million years time some archaeologist would discover my shoe, preserved in
rock in pristine condition!
I restarted the engines and tilted them to just below the surface of the water and on slow revs in the swirling black mud, we made our way back to the river.
Quite a number of cold ones were sunk at the South Alligator Pub later that arvo, with the tourists excitingly relating their stories of adventures to others in the bar. I wanted to hide somewhere as the regulars just shook their heads in disbelief and nodded in my direction.
Some time later I had another ‘experience’ at the same bird sanctuary. I had learned my lesson with going up inlets and was content to idle the boat within range of seeing the birds at their best. This time it was a rising tide. We normally made lunch at a mangrove island where there was some dry space to put the tables out for a spread. But the tide was still not high enough for easy access so I decided just to idle the boat in midstream and commandeered a tourist to hold on to steer the boat l while I organised a feed for everyone.
We were sitting there in mid-stream enjoying lunch and champagne when this crocodile surfaced right next to the boat. Now, I had seen many large crocodiles in the wild and in captivity, but this one was huge. A fleeting glance estimated it longer than the boat and about two metres wide. I took command of the Captain’s chair with haste and we sped away from the scene. The crocodile sank again out of sight and left us all very breathless.
Dingo
I was camped at
Twin Falls in
Kakadu with a mob of customers and enjoying the company and the tropical allure.
We used to get everyone on to air mattresses and I would start a train by lying on my back and paddling with my hands whilst the others held on to the air mattress in front of them. This way they could get whatever sight of
the gorge they wanted in a relaxed manner. The convoy would go up as far as the rocks near the falls and then each person would carry their air mattress to
the pool below the falls where we would laze around for an hour or two.
Even in the early 1980’s tourism was starting to make its impact in to
Kakadu and there were regular incursions into
places like Jim-Jim Falls and
Twin Falls. Wildlife soon adapt themselves to these incursions and the local Dingoes learned all to quickly that there may just be free tucker to be had around the campfires. The Indigenes had not hunted in these areas for over a hundred years and the Dingoes were happy to find snacks left behind by tourists. They became so brazen that they would come up to a
camp in broad daylight and raid any stray tuckerboxes or open tents, whilst the travellers were out enjoying themselves in the cool waters of the gorges.
In the dead of night again, with the fire only embers and ash, I stirred to the feeling of something warm on my face and then something sounding like air escaping. Then something warm again. I opened an eye and looked straight up a
Dingo’s nostril. Who got the bigger fright when I jumped up, I do not know, but the
Dingo left for better pastures, in a hurry. Sleep evaded me after that. It was also time to start using my tent again.
There are more stories but thats enough for now.
Cheers