Lizards are Venomous

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This information has turned my world completely upside down.

The second largest Lizard (sub-species dragon) in the world, the Perente (pronounced PER-renhe) injects a nasty poison into your hand, whixch makes it swell up and bruise.

I learnt this at work. Only in Alice Springs would a live snake show by the local reptile park be considered an education session.

We saw all sorts of snakes from the Legless Lizard (not a snake at all, I know), through to mildly venomous snakes, all of whom look like a Western Brown snake, through to a Western Brown snake (of which ther are eighteen known separate marking patterns), and a Mulga snake, which looks like a python, except when it bites you, you bleed. and bleed, and bleed. We also learnt how to tell a brown snake from the others- it's the only one with freckles. How do you tell it has freckles on it's tummy? When it rears up to strike you, duck down and have a look.

Also learnt about how to avoid being envenomated. Step one: don't get bitten. If you must get bitten, be wearing clothes. Aussie snake-fangs are only about 2mm long, if they strike your clothes, they won't get you.

I love my work somedays.

The Alice does AFL

Yes, real AFL. Friday night, we went out to see the NAB Challenge: The Eagles Play the Crows. The crowd was pretty evenly split (unlike last year, when Carlton played the Crows), and I barracked, of course, for the side that was playing the team that stole our second premiership in a row.

The crowd was awesome, really into it, with lots of kids around, and everyone having a good time. Apparently they only locked 132 people up for drunk and disorderlies, as opposed to last year's total of somewhere around 180. THere was a crowd of more than 10,000 there.

The hospital, too, was pretty quiet that night (I'm told), although the Kids ward was full of children whose parents couldn't be found until the next day.

We ended up in a big group of Junior Medical Officers, Allied Health (a lot of pharmacy), and Medical Students, over in the general admission area, where all the excitement was. Sadly, the Crows lost, 11,11(77) to The West Coast's 12,12(88).
We commiserated by going to the Memo (Memorial Club), where some of us (not me, for once) decided Karaoke was a good idea. I finished with the Memo, at about 1am, although a lot of people continued on to Lasseter's Casino, where the (quite muscly) AFL stars themselves were drinking.

But then, I knew I had a big day the next day...

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Photos

No, really great...
Left to Right:
dunno, Ange (with the Coke can), Ange, Ananda, Jeff, Richard, Sophie.

Ange... and Ange
Two of the awesome Pharmacy Girls, who also went on to have the Big Day Out on Saturday. Girls party harder.

Karaoke Steve
One of our Karaoke Heroes

And Karaoke Jeff
The other.