Day 138 Alice Springs (Reptile Centre)

This is "Ollie" a python and this is me trying to look relaxed!! Today Melv kindly gave me a lift out to Melbourne airport where I caught the flight to the centre of Australia in Alice Springs to make ready for a three day adventure safari in the outback. The safari starts tomorrow sowith time to spare and keen to get out of the forty degree heat I took myself along to the reptile centre. The reptile centre keeper put on a great show and here you can see "Jaffa" the lizard. During the show the keeper lifts open a box of cockroaches (yes they really do run around at a hundred miles an hour like the movies) and places one on the floor for Jaffa to eat. However Jaffa can be a bit fussy (who can blame him) and the keeper has another standby lizard who not surprisingly is a bit fat. During the show I also received a kiss from a blue tongued lizard although it turns out he was tasting me to see if I was on the food chain

We also received a lecture on snake bite first aid. Basically gone are the days of the old tornoquet, lance and suck out the poison. All this does is cut of your circulation risking loss of limb and makes the poor soul who sucks the poison get in a bad way too. Worse it makes it almost impossible fr the hospital to identify what anti venom is required. Instead nowadays they recommend you sit down and let help come to you, wrap a bandage around the whole limb where the bite is a bit like strapping up a sprained ankle (this slows the poison moving through your skin lymph system as it does not actually get into the bloodstream) and put a mark on the bandage where the bite was. There are only two deaths a year in Australia from snakebites and usually due to poor first aid. Compare this to a hundred thousand in Asia where they do not have the medical resources to cover the widespread areas.

Last but not leasr I went to see "Terry" the saltwater crocodile. No amount of first aid is likely to save you from Terry.
Back to the dorm and I managed to get the lower bunk for a change. Tomorrow I will head deep into the outback surrounded by dingoes, scorpions, snakes and ........toasted marshmallows whilst sleeping under the stars.