Mushypea

Killer millipedes, crocodylus porosus and final 5am stretches!

On the subject of dangerous animals, did I mention the nasty killer millipede that bit me on my little toe in the night between Burke & Wills and Normanton – the night of the big thunder storm?  I seriously thought it was a spider and freaked out when it bit me at 2am.  I bounced around the tent shouting all sorts of panicy words (you can imagine).  Everything came out of the tent, Tim thought I had something slightly more scary than a millipede in the tent and came over to see what all the fuss was about.  I was jumping around the tent (kinda comedy hunchback jumping cos the tent is only 4 ft high) looking for the head torch like a mad thing at this stage and my left little toe (this story of a real bush man’s interaction with the horrors of aussie wildlife is starting to sound very soft) was hurting from the bite.  It’s funny what goes around my head when panicky – a friend of ours from a cool bike shop in Manly, Favourite Cycles, told us a story of a tick that “a friend” had to have removed from a delicate ‘mans part’  – I *so* didn’t want to be telling a simlilar story one day.  When I found the head torch I saw a fleshy coloured millipede about 4″ long scurrying really fast around the tent.  We shook the sleeping bag and camera bags out but no sign then I saw him scurry under the tent – it got the shoe treatment and then all was quiet in the bush once again.  The cows went back to sleep as did Tim and I.  This little story would have been much better if I said the millipede was a King Brown Snake!

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 18th, 2009 at 09:57 and is filed under Gulf2Gulf. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.