Bees, flies and other residents of Australia

Before we left the UK for our trip I remember being bothered about encountering a snake or two. I loathe snakes, I have had an irrational phobia of them for as long as I can remember. So far the only snakes we've seen have been in the zoo, or about to go under the wheels of the campervan... Oops! (To be fair, we think one was already dead, and the other went that quickly I had about 0.2 of a second to cringe before it was too late, and the man from the Geraldton craft centre reckoned that the only good snakes were dead ones anyway, so I took that as an official Aussie pardon).

What I didn't bargain on was all the other irritating, huge and sometimes downright gross bugs that we'd come across. Don't get me wrong, we've seen some pretty awesome wildlife on the road in the last two weeks, but at times nature has been challenging!

Ants

I'm pretty convinced that there isn't a single square foot of Australia (and Australia is a flipping big place) that is not home to an ant. They range from diddy little ones to absolutely huge. Some are organised and will take over a discarded dinner plate in a matter of seconds. Some run your feet at great speed tickling like crazy and some just like to bite! They've been our constant companions throughout the road trip. Some good things come of ants though; if there hadn't been thousands of them on the benches at Kalbarri we wouldn't have met Sara from Melbourne!

Flies

Pesky b****rs!!! They are small, and noisy and sometimes they bite. They are a constant reminder of how sweaty you are (mmm nice!) and have an uncanny knack of aiming for your eyes, ears, mouth and up your nose. They usually arrive in a cloud whenever you've stopped the van and have a habit of landing on your feet when you're driving. They are totally immune to bug spray and are ridiculously quick, which does make the odd occasion when you successfully swat one indescribably satisfying!

Mosquitos

Thankfully we've not had a great deal of trouble with mossies in Australia. The other night in Exmouth we had a thunderstorm and I woke up to this strange whining in the van. I realised it was mosquitos... Yay! Two days later the itching is subsiding but I can see why some of the vans come with bug netting in the windows.

'Bombing beetles'

These things are quite funny. I don't know their names but they fly at you, or the torch, with the force of a bomb.

Moths

Whilst mostly harmless the moths tend to fly in your ears when wearing a headtorch which is a bit unpleasant.

Centipedes

They lurk in towels that have fallen from washing lines and my god can these things move quick!!

Cockroaches

Thankfully few and far between as they are about the length of a Cadbury's finger and should only be trodden on if equipped with a sturdy pair of Doc Martens (which, alas, I am not). They could compete for the land speed record.

Bees

Usually in the UK I wouldn't bat so much as an eyelid at a bumblebee. I'm not a great lover of wasps but then who is? In Australia the bees look a lot like wasps so on our first encounter with them at a photograph stop I wasn't hanging around long enough to learn the difference. When we got to our campsite for the night (a pleasant little pull in right near the sea) it didn't take long for us to decide to move on, within a minute we were surrounded and it was clear that cooking and sleeping weren't going to be possible. We moved off to a different site where we were inundated yet again.

Our final encounter with bees was a bit dramatic. We'd stopped for the night by a lovely river with black swans and ducks, really picturesque. Being the dedicated girlfriend that I am I washed Josh's beach gear which was beginning to pong! Well, apparently bees cannot get enough of clean damp washing, or damp scourers. At first it was just a few and I made an effort not to flap. Unfortunately this meant that Josh didn't realise just how many bees were in the van and on his washing, so the bee situation had gone from Anna overreacting to complete bee meltdown.

Opting to abandon ship we carefully tried to extract the washing from the bees, and the scourer (which had to be left behind). Unfortunately lots of bees were still buzzing around the sink so we had to drive off carefully with the back door open and do a few laps of the car park to shake them off. I imagine this looked a lot like something out of a carry on movie, you could imagine the Benny Hill theme playing. Eventually we got the back door shut with about five bees left in the van. We drove a couple of miles as the bees collected themselves on the rear window, then opened the door to let the last few out! Phew! We carried on to the lovely campsite near Geraldton and enjoyed a bug-free evening.

So next time I'm back in the UK bemoaning the number of snails in the garden I might just stop moaning!

Anna xx