shane and a sunburnt country

it's time for me to go and visit shane again. i know i have blogged about him before. i went last wednesday and my abs were still sore on saturday. what am i doing to myself...oh yes, in 3 weeks and 3 sleeps, i will be home and maybe getting into a bikini on the beach...now i remember...

anyway, as the snow is falling outside my office window, i recalled the words of a great book which i started reading the other day 'in a sunburned country' by bill bryson. i had started reading this before, at mum and dad's once, but left it there when i left their place. a copy has fallen into my hot, or maybe that should be cold, little hands and i love it. i recommend it to all, aussie or not. the following is an exert from this book...

'You take my point, of course. This is a country that loses a prime minister and that is so vast and empty that a band of amateur enthusiasts could conceivably set off the world's first nongovernmental atomic bomb on its mainland and almost four years would pass before anyone noticed.* Clearly this is a place worth getting to know.

And so, because we know so little about it, perhaps a few facts would be in order:

Australia is the world's sixth largest country and its largest island. It is the only island that is also a continent, and the only continent that is also a country. It was the first continent conquered from the sea, and the last. It is the only nation that began as a prison.

It is the home of the largest living thing on earth, the Great Barrier Reef, and of the largest monolith, Ayers Rock (or Uluru to use its now-official, more respectful Aboriginal name). It has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. Of the world's ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures—the funnel web spider, box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, paralysis tick, and stonefish—are the most lethal of their type in the world. This is a country where even the fluffiest of caterpillars can lay you out with a toxic nip, where seashells will not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you. Pick up an innocuous cone shell from a Queensland beach, as innocent tourists are all too wont to do, and you will discover that the little fellow inside is not just astoundingly swift and testy but exceedingly venomous. If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistible currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. It's a tough place.'

Australia...you've got to love that place.