Shamballa Cruising Yacht Club: The Nasties of the Bush

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.

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.

Python across the driveway

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!

The black snake in the wheel barrow

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.

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!