Safety Harbor, FL USA
My first entry in this blog is being written while I'm still in the USA. It's based on information I received last night.
Most of Australia is considered to be in a terrible drought. However, since mid-December ('07) there has been unusually heavy rainfall in southwest Queensland.
The heavy rain has caused flooding in Koroit. Because of the nature of the landscape around my mine and based on reports from people who recently visited the area, I thought my mine had escaped any significant effects of the raining and flooding. I was wrong.
Last night I learned that water had run down some shafts and flooded some of the tunnels in my mine. It appears that the water in the tunnels was not any deeper than a foot or two. Now, down in the mine, the water is gone, but some areas of the floor are very muddy.
The water might be gone, but there are now literally hundreds of frogs hopping through the tunnels of the mine, 40 feet underground. Yes, that might sound charming and cute and I'm sure it is quite a sight, but, in that part of the outback, wherever you find a significant number of frogs, you will find a significant number of those who eat frogs . . . yes, you'll find snakes.
These are not the average types of snakes one finds slithering through the grass of well manicured lawns in the USA. The vast majority of snakes living in southwest Queensland are poisonous. In fact, 4 out of 5 of the most deadly snakes in the world live in the area where Koroit is located.
Over the 8 years I've been mining in Koroit, I have found and "removed" a few poisonous snakes from my mine, including 2 Western Taipans ((Oxyuranus microlepidotus) also known as the Fierce Snake, Inland Taipan, Small Scaled Snake), generally thought to be the most venomous land snake in the world. According to some sources (wikipedia), a single bite from a western taipan contains enough venom to kill as many as 100 human adults (or 250,000 mice!). Its venom is thought to be 50 times more toxic than that of the Indian Cobra and over 500 times as toxic as that of the diamondback rattlesnake.
Are you still interested in joining me in my glamorous and exciting life as an opal miner?
1 comment:
Yep, Yep, Yep, I would still like to go there, even with the snakes. We put up with rattle snakes in Utah rock hounding, just be careful where you step and keep an eye open! I don't know about no beds though. No people, yes, yes yes! Enjoy the peace Gene & don't work too hard!
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