Except for floods, non-stop rain, cyclone warnings, crocodiles, box jelly-fish....
Box jelly-fish roam the waters of north Queensland and across the top end, to Broome, in Western Australia. They migrate down to the warm waters usually in October and hang around till April or so. During that time, people are advised not to enter the water (as tempting as the ocean may seem!) and only to swim in the patrolled 'Stinger net Enclosures'. They are patrolled by volunteered Surf-Life Saving operators and the huge nets are like 20 square meters or so, reaching from the shoreline into the water. They 'supposedly' stop the jelly fish from entering the water making it a safe place to swim in. These jelly fish are amongst the most dangerous animal (?) to roam the seas, believe it or not. Their tentacles can be as long as 100 metres all up! How amazing is that? I thought so anyway because that's a lot of metres!!!I spied this this pole the other day after we took a stroll along one of Cairns Northern Beaches...
If you didn't come from this part of the world, you'd find this a little weird wouldn't you? Wouldn't you? A bottle of vinegar? Supposedly if you are stung by one of these jelly fish, the vinegar soothes the pain and helps get the tentacles off too (if they are still entangles around your legs/arms etc.,). Lovely hey. But you see these bottles of vinegar along most of the beaches around here so I don't think they are so weird (now!)
What would I see in your part of the world that I would think was a little weird?
10 comments:
Errrr.... snow?
Oh, and once I was driving up the hill in the middle of winter and on the side of the road I saw a farmer who was holding one of those shepherd's crook things, smoking a pipe and wearing a cape. I thought I'd time warped! But no, it's just life in rural Switzerland.
I saw a programme on these jelly fish once. It's incredible that such an innocuous little thing can actually be deadly! I learned that if you wee on the sting then that has the same effect as vinegar - ugh! Though I don't suppose you'd care so much if you got stung!!
Not sure that you would find anything weird here. It's hard to tell as it all seems normal to me! Of course being the UK we do have our red post boxes for letter collection!
Ms. Mac - yeah, I would find that surreal more than anything. And weird.
Bob-Kat - I have heard about that 'weeing' thing. But if it works.... The best way to avoid being stung though is obvious. Don't go in the water!
Jelly fish can sure ruin a good day at the beach. I am ssure you would find many things weird. Come for a visit and we'll see what we see.
Melody I'll bet you folks don't have Kudzu like we do down here in the southern US. Kudzu is a weed that will absolutely cover ANYTHING and do it in a hurry!
Hey congrats on getting your own place!
Oh my. Vinegar? I hadn't heard of that! Jelly fish are the only thing that scare me about the ocean.
What would you see around here that's weird? Hmm. I'm not sure, but I'm sure there's something! You know how weird we Americans are!! :-)
"Their tentacles can be as long as 100 metres all up!" Wow! That really is amazing!
They did the weeing thing in an episode of Friends once, when Joey had to wee on Monica's leg after she was stung.
The weirdest thing here in Denmark? Probably the people, hee hee. Apart from that? Candles everywhere, all year round (except the middle of summer). On every table in almost every café and restaurant, and outside the doors of many shops and cafés.
I've got a new blog, by the way.
A white box, about .5m x 1.5m x 1.5m, with a small chimney and a couple of antennae coming out, in metro stations and occasionally by tourist attractions: a bio-hazard and radiation detector, to be specific.
Or, more prosaically, people driving an SUV that's 5.6 meters long, carries 9 passengers, and weights 2800 kg -- to ferry around 2 children under 5. (And no, it's not my missus!)
I'm just amazed by the jellyfish! 100 meters of pain! As tempting as the water might look, I'm not sure I would go in during ANY season! That sounds scary.
And what would be here that might seem as odd as a bottle of vinegar on the beach? Nothing! That is definitely an unexpected sight. I mean, we got snow (finally) and you don't. But snow is what you would expect in Connecticut.
I HATE jellyfish. I was stung once really bad as a kid, it took me years to get back in the ocean. They're gross looking buggers too.
Let's see, I've heard that the tobacco stick barns look weird if you aren't from around here. Folks that aren't from the south-east thing they are little log cabins. And a town full of Andy Griffith Show replica squad cars is a little odd too.
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