Bass Coast Post
  • Home
    • Recent articles
  • News
    • Point of view
    • View from the chamber
  • Writers
    • Anne Davie
    • Anne Heath Mennell
    • Bob Middleton
    • Carolyn Landon
    • Catherine Watson
    • Christine Grayden
    • Dick Wettenhall
    • Ed Thexton
    • Etsuko Yasunaga
    • Frank Coldebella
    • Gayle Marien
    • Geoff Ellis
    • Gill Heal
    • Harry Freeman
    • Ian Burns
    • Joan Woods
    • John Coldebella
    • Jordan Crugnale
    • Julie Statkus
    • Kit Sleeman
    • Laura Brearley >
      • Coastal Connections
    • Lauren Burns
    • Liane Arno
    • Linda Cuttriss
    • Linda Gordon
    • Lisa Schonberg
    • Liz Low
    • Marian Quigley
    • Mark Robertson
    • Mary Whelan
    • Meryl Brown Tobin
    • Michael Whelan
    • Mikhaela Barlow
    • Miriam Strickland
    • Natasha Williams-Novak
    • Neil Daly
    • Patsy Hunt
    • Pauline Wilkinson
    • Phil Wright
    • Sally McNiece
    • Terri Allen
    • Tim Shannon
    • Zoe Geyer
  • Features
  • Arts
  • Local history
  • Environment
  • Bass Coast Prize
  • Community
    • Diary
    • Courses
    • Groups
  • Contact us

Backyard critters

2/2/2018

2 Comments

 
Black-headed Bull-Ant (Myrmecia nigriceps) Photo: patrickkavanagh
Terri Allen finds the hood can be a dangerous place.

By Terri Allen

​MANY people born and bred in our local area will only walk on concrete footpaths and formed roads. Under no circumstances will they wander into the bush or follow bush tracks. Snakes are their greatest fear.
 
I contend that the ordinary backyard is much more dangerous than the bush. In the last month I’ve been bitten twice by jack jumpers and once by a large black ant (very painful). European wasps are on the increase, bush flies are everywhere, along with mozzies and blowies, and a swarm of bees settled in my rose bush.
 
Two large blotched blue tongues inhabit the garden – gentle creatures but still frightening if met eyeball to eyeball as happened to me last week. Recently, a “misplaced” long-necked turtle escaped in the garden but was located hours later when every noisy miner in the neighbourhood gave the alarm signal – they vociferously screeched from the fence line until the turtle was captured and returned to its wetland.
 
Not all backyard dangers are animal – some are vegetable: thorny blackberry seedlings, clinging cleavers, rampant kikuyu runners.
 
But the greatest threat? It has to be the noisy miner. This bird has invaded South Wonthaggi’s gardens over the past 15 years. It harasses other birds, evicting wrens, willies, fantails, attacking magpies and ravens. Its voice is ear-piercing. It will swoop humans. But the ultimate outrage is their inroads on my rotary clothesline, cutting the plastic line to extract fluffy white material for nesting.
*****
Both Tarwin Lower and Corinella cemeteries were floral carpets woven in the pinks, blues, purple and gold of wildflowers in December.
 
Native grasses (kangaroo, spear, wallaby and weeping) swayed above swathes of large purple flags, grass trigger plants, dianellas, blue grass-lily, guinea flower, and tiny treasures such as glycine, love creeper and fringe lilies.
 
Each cemetery has an impressive information board. You’ll also learn a lot about our early settlement as you read the gravestones on a wildflower walk. It’s great to see our early citizens surrounded by the beauty they must have witnessed when they entered the district. 
2 Comments
Jan Fleming
2/2/2018 02:58:13 pm

Thanks Terri, you always have an interesting story.

Reply
Mark Robertson
2/2/2018 04:30:30 pm

A few years ago we delighted in telling my new Welsh son-in-law about all the vicious creatures sharing his new home. He was an ex- British army engineer, but was scared witless by the tales of teeth and venom.We only had to embelish the truth a little.......

Reply



Leave a Reply.