Australia, Australia, Australia.........

Hi, guys



King Soloman once said that there is nothing new under the sun. He must be right since he has been recognised as the wisest man who ever lived. When I was about to leave Malaysia for good in January 1993, I thought to myself - 'Oh, good, no more flies, mosquitoes & cockroaches' in a cool clean climate. Was I disappointed? You bet I was sorely disappointed. It turned out that it's worse in Australia, particularly in Queensland where I chose to settle down. They not only have all those vermins listed above. They also have numerous species of spiders of which the most common and poisonous ones are called 'redbacks'. You could be killed if not quickly treated within a few days of being bitten. Frankly, I couldn't remember ever being bothered by spiders back in Malaysia. And wonders of wonders, they also have household lizards running wild in residential homes. These are of the same kind and colour as those we were used to back in Malaysia.



And termites have been responsible for household repairs worth hundreds of millions of dollars around Australia. Almost every household needed to spend money on termite prevention treatment.



Last but not the least, we also need to look out for dangerous 'red ants' in our gardens. These are not your kind of red ants. These are very dangerous ones so much so that the Australian government needed to spend a lot of manpower and money to try to exterminate them.



The place where I live is very close to some private farm land where cattles roam around like free range chickens. The daily mooing and groaning from these beasts are a real nuisance and because of these animals, my locality has more flies during the summer. Every door and window must have a fly screen otherwise the daily invasion of flies will drive us crazy. The brief 3 or 4 cooler months in a year do provide us with some relief.



The constant talk about climate change is the most boring subject in this southern continent. And the Climate Change Minister in the Rudd Government, Ms Penny Wong, who was originally from Kota Kinabalu, was reckoned to be arguably the most influential person in Australia today. What a credit to Sabah's brain exports!



Cheers,

James Chai