G’day all,
I just though you might like to see another one of Australia’s cute and cuddly creatures…The non-venomous Diamond Python..
This pic was taken a few years ago at Gloucester,N.S.W about an hours drive away from me on the East Coast…what a beauty eh !!
It’s going to get run over. I hope it hurried.
I hope not Emm…It’b be just awful to run over a beautiful thing like that…
It’s kind of…big 
??? I thought everything in Australia was venomous. You’ve got a venomous mammal there, fercrissakes! Oh, and the 1" octopus that can kill a human. And the funnel-web spider. Which can kill a human. And which I believe is in major metropolitan areas now.
How did you get a non-venomous snake? 
Slugs I cycle over..
That one would take twice..too be sure…etc.
Slan,
D. 
Man, that’s a lot of koalas! 
djm
even the thought of going near it gives me the heebies.
With all those other nasty critters, why would they need a venomous snake?
Heck, the snakes can just be another version of buzzards and clean up the leftovers from the victims of all the poison poppers.
In Jamaica in the seventies (and maybe now, but I don’t know) the local term for what Canadians call a ‘speed bump’ was ‘sleeping policeman’, which I’ve always thought was charming. Do Australians talk about ‘sunning pythons’?
Iss pretty, yesssssssss…
Yes we do have some nasty critters here…
The Sydney Funnel-web has killed quite a few folks over the years and is a most unpleasant,agro spider…before they strike,they spread their two front legs so the bitey bit has a good access to their prey…My mate caught one in his lounge room only last week…and to see it in the jar,reared up and ready for action is a very scary sight…even if it IS in a jar…
And… the Blue Ringed octopus is very tiny,only about 3’’ across…It is a very pretty thing,but deadly causing paralysis then…party over …
I’m not sure what the Big Joe Blake (ryhming slang=snake) is doing Simon…he looks like he’s in transit to me…on his way home after a hard day maybe…I hope he was’nt sunbaking,not there anyway…
I worked out the rhyming slang.
I dunno about antipodal snakes, but sunning is the typical explanation for road-killed snakes hereabouts. My guess was the snake in the photo had been sunning, likely in a slightly more coil-like posture at the left of the photo, but the car’s arrival had disturbed it and it was in the process of leaving.
Described as semi-arboreal, they are largely nocturnal, climbing trees and shrubs as well as crossing open areas such as rock faces, forest floors and even roads. However, basking behavior is commonly observed.
Wikipedia seems to agree: travelling is more likely to occur at night, while sunning happens by day.
When you are that big you don’t need venom.
It’s the smaller snakes around here that are nasty little ‘bar stewards’. I once disturbed a juvenile copperhead snake while moving a piece of H-beam at work. The little bugger was ready to go 10 rounds with me, reared up and lunged at me several times before slinking off but not before stopping three or four times to look around at me as if he was saying ‘C’mon then, you want some of this then? lets be having you c’mon!’ It would have been a bit embarrassing having to explain to my workmates that I was beaten up by something as big as a shoelace.
Even non-venemous snakes will bluff by faking a strike. In Ontario, the Milk Snake has a pattern that looks a bit like a Massassauga rattlesnake. If disturbed, it’ll rear up as if about to strike and even vibrate its rattle-less tail in dry leaves to fake a rattle.
They are still called that now, here in the UK.
Yon’s a big craytur, fer sure.
Really? That’s interesting. Do you know if its a recent arrival ie, brought by Jamaican immigrants?
Because in 1970, it was new to my dad. He was english, but hadn’t lived there since he got demobbed from the navy in about 1946. He was a pretty word-oriented person, so I’m assuming he’d have known it if the expression was one he’d heard before.
As usual, I haven’t a foggy notion. It seems to be well-established British Usage, and apparently dates from before Windrush. The second URL indicates the origin with one Sergeant Lloyn. I can’t find any other reference for this. The fact that the Ozzies calling them “sleeping cops” persuades me that it is long-established British usage. And you find the same usage in Hungarian. Maybe it was used in a play by Aristophanes?
http://www.omniglot.com/blog/2007/11/14/twmpath/
http://idontspeakscotch.blogspot.com/2008/09/linking-sleeping-policemen-and.html
In Jamaica in the seventies…the local term for what Canadians call a ‘speed bump’ was ‘sleeping policeman’
s1m0n, in the UK speed humps/bumps are indeed still known as sleeping policemen. Here in Australia ‘speed hump’ is a colloquialism for an Aboriginal sleeping on the highway. This is more than likely an urban myth because if it happened as regularly as truck drivers make out, there would be a national enquiry into the problem. I know it has happened before (I would have to search for the news item) I can remember a number of years ago that two Aboriginal men were hit at night by a semitrailer that was crossing the Nullarbor Plain, one was killed and the other badly injured. The survivor told police that they had been drinking, decided to walk back to town but got tired, lay down on the road for a rest and fell asleep. They chose the road because at night the temperature drops significantly but the tarmac stays hot for hours after sundown, so they lay down on it to keep warm.
In South Australia where I live, truckies refer to Aborigines as ‘Nullarbor speed humps’.
…Oh, another colloquialism, wombats are known as ‘sumpies’ because if you hit one your sump will be f…ed!!
Edit.
Here’s a wombat for those of you who don’t know what one looks like. I have no idea who the girl is and the wombat is only a juvenile, they grow to twice this size and she would not be holding it like that, if at all!!
