While the grass may not have been as high as an elephant's eye of late , it has been in need of a cut because of the rain and hot weather , plus the fact that the suntanned mower mogul had not been heard from since he announced he was going to make a visit to Sydney..
This then was the jungle situation when a kind neighbour across the way knocked on the door and announced that there is a Death Adder on the loose nearby .
By Peter Simon
Receipt of this warning caused an outbreak of tip-toeing through the tulips when walking through the long grass to the wheelie bins ,palm fronds scattered about under which a serpent could hide ,near where the adder had been seen.Death Adders were the centre of a study on Magnetic Island , not followed up by the hibernating mainland media , as this 2018 public notice shows .
An island reporter and renowned filmmaker , George Hirst , was bitten on a big toe by a Death Adder ,transported to the mainland on a ferry , his foot viewed at no charge by a throng of passengers. At the Townsville Hospital his fanged toe seemed to attract more attention than James Bond .
In Australia , crotchety old men in outback towns have been described as "Death Adders ". I knew several . One , named Cranky Franky, an Englishman, lived in a tin shack in the old mining town of Pine Creek, in the Northern Territory.
I went digging for old bottles and wartime relics with him on dump sites in the area . He used to scoff at a lot of young men , said they were afraid of hard manual labour ,regarded a shovel as "a black snake"which they would not pick up.
Strangely, he accused some early Chinese gold miners as being in this category, saying they were so eager to get at the payload that they did not properly clear out their holes.
I mentioned him to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh when they visited Darwin.
At another Territory gold mining town , Tennant Creek , the local cemetery sports a gravestone for a colourful character , described as a Death Adder at times ,photograph by Abra.
