Bellingen is very beautiful.
Our co-op, Shamballa, is nestled in a lush sub-tropical forest where the
water from Boggy Creek is crystal clear and vibrantly plumed birds flit through
the massive forest giants. It is a
little bit of paradise. But this
paradise has its Nasties and over the last few weeks we have had a few close
encounters with them.
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| Yellow tailed black cockatoo in the tree tops |
Snakes: I don’t mind snakes. When growing up, my brother use to constantly
catch snakes, bring them home and we would play with them. I particularly remember a very pretty ring
neck snake that we had in a terrarium for a long time. But I am frightened of poisonous snakes and
in Australia that means most snakes.
Pythons are okay. Tree snakes are
very pretty. But anything else and I
want to be as far away as possible.
So in our first weeks here I was quite happy to see a tree
snake in the rafters on the veranda.
When a python went in front of our neighbours car it was fun to have a
look and urge it back into the bush. Then when a smaller python took up residence
in a cement block in our retaining wall outside the kitchen, I felt as if we
had a pet and said hello to it every day.
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| Python across the driveway |
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| Our 'pet' python in the cement block |
I was not feeling so friendly when while I was shovelling
wood chips into a wheelbarrow one shovelful contained a red belly black
snake. I let out a shriek and Bob came running. The snake had
buried itself deep under the wood chips in the wheel barrow. Bob gingerly
shovelled through to find it. It poked it head up trying to slither out
of the wheelbarrow coming right for me.
Bob instinctively went whack with the back of the shovel and we
instantly had a headless snake. For Bob, revenge was sweet. A red belly black snake put Bob in hospital
about 29 years ago. The creepy thing was that the headless body of the
snake continued to wiggle and writhe for about 30 minutes. Yuck!
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| The black snake in the wheel barrow |
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| The headless snake still wriggling. It was only a small one so yes, I do feel a bit guilty.... |
Leeches: These little slimy creatures use to plague us
when we lived here before. Often we
would not be aware that one had latched on to our ankle or in between our toes
until we had taken off our socks and found them soaked in blood. Or we would see an engorged body slithering
across the floor. Then we would call out
to everyone to check their ankles to see if they were bleeding, or if they had
any other of these pests sucking their blood.
The best way to remove them is to sprinkle them with salt
and they instantly fall off. If there is
no salt you have to grab them and pull them off your skin. They are extremely slimy and it is almost
impossible to get a grip plus they are firmly attached. Pulling them off is not a fun process at all. When I first moved to Bellingen in the late
1980’s, I was totally repulsed by these creatures. But, as with anything you get use to them and
now I am merely annoyed when they make an appearance.
Fortunately leeches seem to be in the decline here and in
the 4 months that we have been back I have only had one encounter. (It has been very dry here which may account
for their scarcity.) The worse part,
besides bleeding for many minutes after the slimy thing is off, is that the
bite itches for days.
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| File photo of an attached leech |
Argh Lantana! We see lantana everywhere in the
Mediterranean. There it is a pretty
little flowering shrub adorning front gardens.
Here in the sub-tropics it turns into a monster. Its scratchy branches tangle and twist taking
over whole hillsides. We spent the first
few months here slashing back the lantana and my forearms were covered in scratches. Then we found a better way to get rid of the large
clumps. We tie rope around the root base
(bow lines and clove hitches are not just for boats) and pull huge clumps out of
the earth using our trusty Troopie workhorse.
It takes just a few minutes. Very
satisfying!
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| The pretty flowers of a lantana |
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| A monster clump of lantana |
For all the Nasties, I must admit that this beautiful little
corner of Australia still comes off as a bit of paradise.
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| View from our veranda overlooking the dam in a rain storm |
