Its a twister Auntie Em
Monday, November 14th, 2005
Australiais a land of many contrasts and, as Bill Bryson is so ready to pointout (in a somewhat high and quavering voice), it is also the place withalmost all of the number one most deadly animals on the planet - snake,sea snake, jellyfish, spider, just about anything that creeps, crawls,bites and kills. We don't have the most deadly frog, but there is arelationship-killing toad here but since he is an import, I guess itdoesn't count.
In stark contrast, we are pretty tame on boththe weather and geology fronts. It really is pretty much all sunshineand mild weather, apart from the occasional (ok, semi-constant)drought. I guess all this mild and gentle weather has lulled ourgovernment into a sense of security on the whole global warming issuebecause it has decided, in its parental wisdom, that we don't need todo any of that silly signing of the Kyoto Accords on climate control.
Butsurprise, surprise the other day on the news I stumbled across a littlelocal weather disaster - that's right, Australia had its first recordedtwister, or twisters, in of all places - Broken Hill. This is a small mining town in western New South Wales made famous by the Australian mining giant BHP (aka Broken Hill Proprietary company, now BHP Billiton) and the movie Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
BrokenHill is a quaint, Victoria era town, with many local artist inresidence as well as the miners. Construction is mostly brick, wood;and here comes the problem; corrugated iron. Now as just about anyAustralian will tell you, that stuff is sharp and nasty when its new,when its old and corroded, its a killer. Examine any of us closelyenough you will most likely find a scar from childhood where we triedto tangle with the garden shed or the roof of the primary schooltoilets. Corrugated iron is sharp, nasty, vindictive and usually rusty,which means the slightest scratch sent you to the school nurse for atetanus shot.
Now while the anglo population is busyputting up charming iron and stone buildings, its important to consideranother, more native part of the population. They are black, furry anddeadly - namely the funnel web spider. Now this little bugger is anative of Australia and just happens to be one of the most toxicspiders in the world, and they have the charming habit of jumping outof wood piles at people. Get that, an incredibly toxic spider that youdon't have to find, it comes and finds you.
Now how exciting is THAT.
It gets better.
Whena strangely unseasonal tornado blows through town, what you get is anair bourne concoction of super-deadly spiders and shredding, tetanusladen pieces of iron.
Who said climate change wasn't dangerous?
