Australian Flys

don't walk through long grass in the morning - especially with a dog... you will become a yummy morsel! :wink:

You just need to learn the Australian salute! (that would be swishing your hand in front of your face...)

You have obviously never read any Patrick White, he loves them in his stories of degradation.

As my mother says "The flies nearly carried me off!"
need I say more?

If you say "Piss Off" several times that seems to help also while waving your hands...just a sugestion...lol

sometimes... it makes you feel better anyway!

Rub garlic all over your exposed skin areas. This keeps the flies away. It also keeps dogs and cats away. And people. Telephone poles, taxis...

and vampires...

Bill Bryson mentions those flies as well - in his book, A Sun burnt Land (or something close-ish to that title).

oh yes, they are famous! Not like the lazy Canadian flies you can swat without looking...

If you watch a rural Australian talk their top lip doesn't move and their mouths don't open wide, or often. Traditionally Australians are known as laconic, actually we just don't want the flies to land in our mouths.

The flies are actually much better than when I was a kid, some days it was like wearing two shirts (one black and mobile) - apparently CSIRO seeded the nation with dung beetles (scarabs or dors to the over sensitive) and that cut the numbers down heaps.

Don't you Ozzies have birds that eat flies? That's one of the things that keeps our insect population down in the States, voracious blue jays who'll eat their own weight in flies in a single day.

Well, just bitch, bitch, bitch whydoncha!!

We told you about the sharks, the crocodiles, the snakes, the stonefish, the deadly octopi, the funnel-web spider, the redback spider, the Fierce snake, the sea-snakes, the toxic stinging jellyfish, the disembowelling kick of the emu and the poisonous spur on the platypus. Do we get some sort of thanks!!

No. 'You have flies'. Well, sue us!

go the crazy, fear inducing animals!

Do Aussie flies bite? Here where I live we have regular flies as well but we also have the psycho evil bastid biting flies like black flies, horse flies, and those damned relentless deer flies! And don't get me started on the devil sent mosquitoes.

And we have Bears too, but they don't bother anyone ;-)

yep, horse flies... they bite. i remember having a dog that they loved to bite on the nose. Haven't seen them since.

I use to think the horseflies were evil until I met the deer flies. Those things are relentless!

We have big slow flies I've always known as March Flies they bite. But just before I left Canberra I discovered a new species that looked like a house fly and was just as quick, but also bit - buggers!

As for Merry A's question about fly eating birds, well I think what happened was that the european invasion of Australia 200 odd years ago rapidly increased the population of dung creators (specifically sheep and cows) I think the sheep outnumber us 2 to one and the cows are about even with us. That gave the flies a massive new food source but no new predators.

Please don't introduce Blue Jays here, we're still getting over the cane toad, rabbit and carp.

That's intersting, hingehead. I hadn't thought of that.

Well hey! Life for Orstraylian kids is a battle between being eaten or stung to death! After reaching adulthood safely we are still expected to look after whining Poms and Yanks who don't know which end of a crocodile bites? Not on my shift guys...

I don't like the sand flies; you can't see the lil buggers, they bite you and then the 'sting' stays around for weeks! Bloody things!

Agree Ay - and worse yet I'm sure someone told me that the irritation they cause is because they urinate on you, truly.

To quote Billy Connolly: "It's amazing that Australians reach adulthood at all, the place is fraught with danger."