I wouldn’t be comfortable with the dangerous delights of Australia if I hadn’t grown up there, learned to spot the dugites and the tigers, been swarmed by ants

I wouldn’t be comfortable with the dangerous delights of Australia if I hadn’t grown up there, learned to spot the dugites and the tigers, been swarmed by ants while having a piss in the spinifex, gotten the odd toe stuck in a blue tongue, had jars of Christmas spiders for pets, acquired the requisite taste for a widgidi grub, discovered the reason you never kill the huntsmen, found much delight and mirth in tempting the rock pool blue rings out of their holes with a coin or two, swam beyond the reef only to be stalked back to shore by a tiger, survived the odd bushfire, beating back the flames with a damp potato bag… if my old Poppa hadn’t taught me how to deploy the hairspray and cigarette lighter installed permanently in the dunny, against the ever-present red back.. all before my teenage years brought me to the safety of the upper hemisphere. Living in the vicinity of the Austrian alps now, in my older age, like you I’m also a lot more terrified of those slippery mountain paths, but more so of the complacency and dullness that a Swiss life can bring ..