And from the "True to God" department...

This has nothing to do with anthropogenic climate change or the lack thereof. This is just plain freaky. A man has been stung by a thimble-sized Irukandji jellyfish 25 metres above the ocean while fishing from a bulk carrier, and needed to be airlifted back to the mainland for treatment. The resuce helicopter paramedics took awhile to work it out, but put together his symptoms and signs with the fact he reported getting sprayed with water while fishing off the deck of the cargo ship, and decided it must have been an Irukandji sting.

Australians are born with the knowledge that there is an all-pervading tacit agreement amongst the populace to maintain certain globally held beliefs about our country, for example: We all rode to school on kangaroos (this one is not negotiable, even first generation Vietnamese-Australians and Sudanese refugees know not to cock this one up when talking to foreigners), and any variation on the theme of "everything is poisonous and will kill you".

So there you go, Irukandji are tiny, translucent and essentially invisible, they are enormously venomous, hurt like a bastard and can make your blood-pressure do tumbleturns anywhere between 40 and 200+ mmHg. Thats when they're not killing you. And now THEY CAN FLY.

If this doesn't freak you out, then consider the young girl in Point Lonsdale who yesterday took home some shells from the beach and was cleaning them in the bathtub, only to have a blue-ringed octopus fall out. This one even freaks me out. Blue-ringed octopi are quite literally deadly, and they're tiny, and just to really scare the crap out of everyone, don't even display their distinctive blue rings until you piss them off.

Welcome to Australia. Its hotter than hell and everything is poisonous and will kill you, but at least we're good at sport.