Swimming instructors at Casuarina swimming club in Darwin, Australia, have a unique way to help teach their young students to swim faster - by having a crocodile chase them during speed trials! The instructors use a six-foot saltwater crocodile with its jaws taped shut, but even with all those precautions, students still find the experience a tad intimidating. Yet this new teaching method seems to be working - the students have found that it helps shave seconds off their swimming time!

Did a lot of camping there out of canoes when I was a teen. You gotta go in Jan-March or the clouds of skeeters will drain you.

If I go that far south nowadays I'll usually take my boat down into the Thousand Islands area for some fishing. Last time there I pulled up a 200 lb Jew Fish. Protected species.......

Apparently they're not such a delicacy since word got out that one gave a 28 ft salty one almighty belly ache



Oi, don't go giving our swim secrets away...next they'll be taking our gold medals at the next Olympics....there again, could always dispense with the tape.

Yep....some of that paper tape & a few 25 footers.

Probably not....the cold, damp English weather 'd have 'em too busy polishing their armour to prevent rust setting in.

Speaking of spiders, my friend just was bitten by a brown recluse (think thats how its spelled not sure) but had to have a large portion of his calf removed due to bite. We have little spiders to that will make you very sick too.

Brown Recluse spiders are NOT native to Florida but are in fact Damn Yankees.

I stayed for awhile on a coffee plantation at Mt Hagen in the highlands of New Guinea in the early seventies. One day, walking happily through a group of trees, I was advised by people I was walking with to take an alternate route.....wondering why, they pointed upwards.......I was walking into a giant spiderweb that was like a hammock strung between two trees......with a spider in the middle that looked about the size of a dinnerplate.
The way the light was did not make it very visible, but early the next morning I returned and the web was covered with dew and looked like a massive sheet of diamonds......wish I’d had a decent camera then......

The size of the insects there was amazing.......millipedes were multimillepedes.

Spiders the size of our funnelwebs and just as attractive would walk across the tiled loungeroom floor and the native women would nonchalantly walk up to them with their bare feet and slowing squash & grind them with their big tows......I was a teenage arachnophobe......it wasn’t pretty.......

One morning I woke up with two bites on the outside of my leg just above the ankle.......they developed quickly into two large boils the size of small marbles and the boils persisted for weeks.....not particularly painful, just irritating. Many months later they healed somewhat, one has even faded, but what I presume was the first bite with the most venom, left a dark brown patch a little larger than these smilies.........and several times a year becomes insanely itchy and bleeds for weeks and then settles down again......this has persisted for well over 30 years. Lord only knows what bit me......I don’t even wanna know what was crawling around in my bed!!.....

We have had water restrictions in Florida for years, you water according to address, odd even day things and once a week, or when they are nice and we have had plenty of rain we get two days, yet commercial properties water anytime they want, city workers openly waste water, 10 guys watching one guy working. We always wonder about that? Back to water restrictions, wash the car only with hose shut off, you can hand water everything but not use a sprinker system, weird, cause you can set it for a short time and it will just use a small amount for the whole yard, just to keep the plants alive. Also, no limit on in home use. Again major corps. can have running water fountains and run sprinkler systems anytime to keep the properties looking great. Fines here if caught are $500.00 american money for first offence, second offence is court appearance, judge isn't very nice even if you state, like I heard someone say, judge, it's raining out right now and the sprinklers are on outside the courthouse watering the plants. Government rules, we don't, and they don't have to follow the rules, just us little guys and gals. Ever see pictures of the white house lawn and rose garden, not like Bush has any water restrictions, Any Governor, Senate member, anyone in govenment seem to be allowed to do anything and the taxpayers pay. Nice Job if you can get it. I would run but hey if you ever have done anything you wouldn't want your parents to know about I assure you someone would dig it up and it would be all over the news, net, tabloid, you name it. When I was in my twenties, I did stuff (like Clinton) but I inhaled.  Didn't inhale, we all know that was a crock, but it made for great news didn't it. Opps off track again, sorry. to long to read. Oh well..... Can't even remember what the whole thing was about in the first place. Later.

  Steve Irwin "RIP". Widow and Daughter doing great, glad he has such a strong family. Bindi is soooooo sweet and she will grow up to be just like daddy I am sure, great role model for the little girls in this world. Daddy would be so proud.

You obviously didn't know my first missus, then....reasons to be fearful, parts 1, 2 and 3. These days I'm not mating at all....too old n' grumpy to have the patience for full-time kids. I mean, I love it when my kids bring my grandkids to visit (visit being the operative word), but when I weary from all the excitement/attention giving, I can say to my kids: "Don't you think it's time to take these lil mites home and get 'em ready for bed.




Um, that's Uluru these days...especially to we European invaders....and now I know that I shan't bother to dig it up to see wots under it.

Yeah, I usually like a performance with more substance....but in the case of the (deadly) impersonating jellyfish, I'd be more than happy to miss the show entirely. Was up at Airlie Beach a few years back when a rescue launch brought some guy in who got stung by one off one of the islands....poor bugger, was touch and go for a while.

Ah, so it's like an iceberg, eh...the biggest bit's underneath.



I didn't really need an excuse not to dig it up. You're right, with me crook back I didn't wanna have to anyway, so when Jafo said wot wos under it I wos relieved. Now yer tells me it's mostly underground (like a huge bloody great chunk of it), I can refer to that instead and save face big time when I make the formal announcement not to dig up Ayers...er, Uluru on national telly. Thank goodness you came along when you did, like before somebody tricked me into it by suggesting that Jafo lied about all them people bein' buried under there.