* A teenager bitten by one of the world's most venomous snakes in Sydney has died in hospital with his family at his bedside.
* More than 700 people have been stung by bluebottle jellyfish on Gold Coast beaches, including eight children rushed to hospital, lifesavers say.
* The bodies of two men missing for up to two weeks have been found in a remote desert area in Western Australia.
It's a wonder tourists come here at all.
On the subject of bluebottle stings, I was at a beach close to Brisbane yesterday and saw a distraught girl, aged about 10, who had been stung. When we arrived, there were lots of kids in the water, but I had noticed bluebottles every 1 to 2 meters at the water's edge, and moved my kids to a part of the beach protected from the on shore winds (and where there were no bluebottles to be seen on the sand.) We saw the stung girl as we were leaving.
I have only had one sting in my life, as a young adult, but that's enough to know how extremely painful they can be. It always puzzles me why people still go in the water, and let their kids go in, when it doesn't take too much to notice if they are about.
I also am curious as to whether these nasty creatures are as common a problem in other countries' beaches as they are here.
Update: from this morning's paper, a story about a type of tropical ulcer that, strangely enough, can be caught from the distinctly un-tropical waters off southern New South Wales and Victoria. The story explains:
THE flesh-eating Daintree Ulcer has struck again, this time in NSW where a sea kayaker developed a gaping wound on his ankle.
Also known as the Bairnsdale or Buruli Ulcer, the ulcer destroys skin, fat, blood vessels and sometimes bone.
In this case, the 42-year-old man's ankle became infected while sea kayaking off the town of Eden in southern NSW.
A scab on his ankle developed into a large, open wound that continued to grow over five months before the ulcer was excised by Melbourne surgeons early last year.
Common in Africa, the ulcer is caused by the Mycobacterium ulcerans infection, first identified in coastal Victoria in 1948.
Infection rates have doubled in Victoria in the past three years with 61 people diagnosed last year.
61 people a year get tropical ulcers in Victoria?Well, at least they understand its cause? Not really:
The reasons for outbreaks and transmission remain a mystery.
But Professor Johnson said direct exposure to mosquitoes was a factor.
"Wearing protective clothing and insect repellent appears protective," he said.
It's a dangerous world, hey.
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