So zero of course means snakes, and I've seen a few, most memorably a brown snake lying across the path down to the stables on my first morning working as a groom in South Australia, and another one slithering under the haystack where I had to go twice a day. I actually threw a rock at the first one, not knowing that it was as likely to attack as to retreat. Then for two, I could count the low-life who exposed himself to me at night in Brisbane as I waited for a bus; or the kites that tried to mug me as I tried to eat my lunchtime muffin on the grass in Litchfield National Park in the Northern Territory; or the kookaburras that laughed when I fell out of my pushchair at Taronga Zoo in Sydney when I was 3. But instead I'll stay positive and nominate the emu I attracted at Wilpena Pound by lying on my back and waggling my legs in the air. Worked a treat!
Up to four, and of course there's heaps of choice here. The wombat at Cradle Mountain in Tasmania, that I managed to touch, to his alarm (sorry) because he was so short-sighted? Diddy Boy the dingo I butted noses with in tropical Queensland? All those fearsome crocodiles in the Territory? The camels I rode at Uluru and on Cable Beach in Broome, and in South Australia? The koala I cuddled, somewhat nervously (they have sharp claws, and can poo on you)? Hard to choose, but I think I have to go for cute little Steve, the baby grey kangaroo on the Eyre Peninsula, who just wanted to climb inside my jacket for a cuddle.
That's the end of the positive encounters now, because six means insects: the sticky, sticky flies that walk all over your face in the Outback that will not be brushed off; and the voracious mozzies in Queensland that bit me so viciously that my ankles swelled up and I couldn't sleep, and I had to take actual antihistamine tablets to fix the itching. And eight of course has to be spiders, and whether that's the ones that spun the webs I rode through wearing just a bikini in South Australia, or the tarantula on my bed at the farm, there's no way in the world that I can think about them without shuddering. On second thoughts, two legs good...
(This is Matt Preston, by the way, in his pre-Australian Masterchef days. Not a cravat in sight!)
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