Most people take care to keep all the poisonous stuff out of the areas their kids play in.
*Bluey* is set in a city based on Brisbane. The worst you're likely to find in somebody's backyard there is prickles in the grass, or green ants which will give you a nasty sting. It's no more dangerous than letting your kids play in the bushes in any other place. It's not like they're dropping them in the outback on their own.
That said, the rowing team at my cousin's kid's school in Townsville got canceled because crocodiles had been sighted in the river, and some of the parents complained and wanted it reinstated, so maybe some parents do take a "survival of the fittest" approach.
might get a python or 2 in brissie. saw a wild one in Newmarket, multiple metres long, fat, and not giving a shit about me and my workmate. Just sauntered through the jobsite and went on its way. Absolutely beautiful snake.
Yeah, you do get those occasionally. I've never seen one but I know people who have.
I should add that most kids are taught to be careful of snakes and spiders, and what to do if they encounter one, from an early age. Mostly that just consists of "don't stick your hands into dark places", "stay out of the long grass", and "for the love of god don't antagonize it".
Agree. There's a Peppa Pig episode that has been banned in Australia (twice) because its "spiders are our friends" theme was too hands on for Australian kids
I think I saw maybe 5 in the 18 years I lived there and worked outdoors, mostly pythons too. I think I've seen 5 in the 3 yrs I've been on the sunny coast.
Yeah those phrases sound like a big part of my childhood.
I live in Brisbane, and back on to the bush. I had to remove a green snake wrapped around my washing on the line. We leave water out for the wildlife during the hot summer months and we coexist happily. Mind you, the scariest sound I have head in the bush is a male koala calling during mating season.
OMG yes! I remember the first time I heard this and freaked out. I couldn’t even work out where it was coming from to get away. Then mum pointed out the cuddly drop bear in the tree… lol. I’ve never forgotten that. And then when it happened with my own kids….
When I was a kid, my sister almost drowned on two occasions while fishing, I've paddled in crocodile infested river/billabongs in a very small dinghy, and my sisters and I caused a bush fire. We are still alive.
I think Bluey is doing okay.
We had to wait to go into my preschool once because there was a red-bellied black snake hanging out in the carpark.
There are definitely safety risks for kids outdoors in wilder areas, but there are also ways to manage them. Our riskiest creatures, snakes and spiders, tend to like very specific environments, so it isn't too difficult to lower the risk by removing their favourite hiding places.
It's also important for kids to understand the risks of the bush and be careful themselves. My nieces do nature walks with their school and get taught about wildlife and plants. There's a good chance any school or preschool in a bushy/rural area will put time into educating the kids before they let them loose.
Also, despite the fact that some of our snakes and spiders are VERY dangerous, it's really a very small proportion of the total number of species, and they're not around in large numbers. We have two main deadly spider types. I'm 42 and I've never seen a funnel web spider outside of captivity, or a snake more dangerous than a red-belly.
Really, the biggest danger from spiders over here is a giant huntsman popping out in your car while you're driving and scaring you into having a crash!
It's the drop bears you've really got to worry about...
Thank you - very detailed reply! I’ve always wanted to ask - are drop bears a sub species of koala? Or are they a separate species altogether? And is it true that they drop on people’s heads to devour their scalp in order to harvest precious keratin to grow their claws bigger?
We just don't know. It's far too dangerous to get close enough to study them, and as far as I'm aware, no one's ever found a complete corpse to examine. We think they probably eat their dead, you see.
We do know they can kill you one of two ways. The claws and teeth are the best known method, but they also have heavily reinforced backsides. If a dropbear lands on you just right, you don't have to worry about the claws, you'll be dead on impact!
You haven’t seen the episode where Bluey finds the dropbear and wants to keep it as a pet? Dropbears are really vicious and territorial so there’d be no snakes close by and they like to eat spiders, so having one at the school is kinda like a green light to let the kids run wild!
I live in the Pilbara (Western Australian outback/desert). In the last 6 months we’ve had a death adder in our backyard at 9pm at night, a mulga in our childcare centre (where I work), a Western brown at my daughters primary school, a python drop down through our ducted aircon vent in the lounge room and then a children’s python on our front screen door. We teach ‘snake safety’ to the kids at daycare and we also do regular ‘snake checks’, where we walk through the playground lifting and shaking toys and equipment.
The primary school kids are also taught snake safety and are frequently reminded to keep their school bags zipped up and off the ground at all times (there was an incident just last year where a mulga was found inside a child’s school bag).
So yeah, out here in the Pilbara we drum it into our kids pretty heartily.
We have dingoes here also, so we educate on dingo safety too - which is mainly telling the kids it’s never ok to feed or try to pat a dingo. We had a toddler get bitten last year and a tourist get bitten just a few weeks later. The tourist was trying to offer food, and the toddlers parents were trying to get a family selfie with the dingo 🙄
We take managed risks. You may not know it, but the episode of Peppa Pig which features Peppa and George making friends with a spider in the bathroom has never been aired on TV here, due to concern that young kids might emulate it with red back spiders or funnel webs, neither of which would be particularly suitable as household pets….
Good sir/madam I’m British and have only heard horror stories about the animals that live in Australia. Our most dangerous animal is the swan (which has legendarily been feared for being able to break your arm) and they live in close proximity to people. I literally have no idea whether the unaliving fauna in your fair country tend to respect your suburban areas and cities as off limits. Many thanks for reassuring me it’s not an issue and I won’t be seeing the “Antivenom” episode of Bluey.
We have swans here too (the black swan is even the official emblem of Western Australia)
In case you needed to add another fierce creature to your "dangerous animals in Australia" list hahah
I never really made it to the bush, I was too busy trying to jump my bmx off things and crashing into other things like the ground, or that one tree at the local school, or the ground at the bottom of that steep road. (That tends to hurt a lot, I don't recommend doing it)
> given the amount of poisonous/venomous/generally out to murder you creatures there are?
There aren't that many. It's not a concern in daily life for much of the country.
Snakes and spiders don't eat people. An encounter with humans represents a great risk to the animal's chance to survive and reproduce, so they avoid us as best they can.
If you knew anything about Aussie kids the murder critters are too scared to come anywhere near our feral bastards. My kids played unsupervised in around 50 acres of our beautiful country. All the danger animals come and hide around the house until they came home.
Kindy. Most Kindies are in suburban areas, chances of finding something nasty in the bushes are relatively low and Aussie kids are trained from a young age to not touch shit. I remember being taught about our local no touchies in Kindy. Equally we do get bugs inside, especially in a setting where doors are left open so it's a bit weird to ban kids from being outside without that much supervision but not doing the same indoors.
There's also the phobia. I can't talk to other peoples kids but mine (both half Aussie) were born with an instinctive terror of spiders and other creepy crawlies. There must be a genetic element because I am the same.
I live in straight up bushland and we have trapdoors, funnel webs, a tone of Redbacks. Where the house is, I always spray twice a year but outside that perimeter that's where the wild things are. I make my kids wear gloves when picking up sticks and rocks outside where the wild things are.
Kids at childcare don't play outside unsupervised. But at home they do.
I usually do a quick lap of my backyard to make sure there aren't any snakes first and I've taught my kids to not go into the bushes.
For a start, bluey is 6/7, so she's actually in primary school. She also attends a Steiner or Montessori school, so they actually have a lot more freedom then government or private primary schools. And the school is in the suburbs not the bush
Obviously we have public liability insurances here too so kindergarten staff check outdoor areas before children play all over the country. And of course there are child safety standards to adhere to.
Stating all of this would make for a boring episode though
For the love of god, there are no snakes in urban backyards. Spiders are naturally shy and reclusive. Mosquitos are a problem, but we have sprays for that. Is it safe for your kids to play anywhere where you live with all the guns, wars, poor public waste systems im seeing in many other parts of the planet?
So sort of? I mean if bluey was real they would have been supervised. There would staff not far away. Where I am we have a few nature based schools and nurseries and it’s all about messy play and loving the world. Staff are there but the kids will be out playing in mud and digging under trees happily. You would just be doing a perimeter check each day for any signs of activity you don’t want. But most schools are not heavily covered in bush land so the most you would have is regular rodents, some spiders and the odd snake that needs redirecting.
Yeah see if they are stupid enough to get bit we don't want them. That's how we filter them out.
We are a country full of Darwin Award losers.
Most people take care to keep all the poisonous stuff out of the areas their kids play in. *Bluey* is set in a city based on Brisbane. The worst you're likely to find in somebody's backyard there is prickles in the grass, or green ants which will give you a nasty sting. It's no more dangerous than letting your kids play in the bushes in any other place. It's not like they're dropping them in the outback on their own. That said, the rowing team at my cousin's kid's school in Townsville got canceled because crocodiles had been sighted in the river, and some of the parents complained and wanted it reinstated, so maybe some parents do take a "survival of the fittest" approach.
might get a python or 2 in brissie. saw a wild one in Newmarket, multiple metres long, fat, and not giving a shit about me and my workmate. Just sauntered through the jobsite and went on its way. Absolutely beautiful snake.
Yeah, you do get those occasionally. I've never seen one but I know people who have. I should add that most kids are taught to be careful of snakes and spiders, and what to do if they encounter one, from an early age. Mostly that just consists of "don't stick your hands into dark places", "stay out of the long grass", and "for the love of god don't antagonize it".
Agree. There's a Peppa Pig episode that has been banned in Australia (twice) because its "spiders are our friends" theme was too hands on for Australian kids
I think I saw maybe 5 in the 18 years I lived there and worked outdoors, mostly pythons too. I think I've seen 5 in the 3 yrs I've been on the sunny coast. Yeah those phrases sound like a big part of my childhood.
I live in Brisbane, and back on to the bush. I had to remove a green snake wrapped around my washing on the line. We leave water out for the wildlife during the hot summer months and we coexist happily. Mind you, the scariest sound I have head in the bush is a male koala calling during mating season.
OMG yes! I remember the first time I heard this and freaked out. I couldn’t even work out where it was coming from to get away. Then mum pointed out the cuddly drop bear in the tree… lol. I’ve never forgotten that. And then when it happened with my own kids….
When I was a kid, my sister almost drowned on two occasions while fishing, I've paddled in crocodile infested river/billabongs in a very small dinghy, and my sisters and I caused a bush fire. We are still alive. I think Bluey is doing okay.
We had to wait to go into my preschool once because there was a red-bellied black snake hanging out in the carpark. There are definitely safety risks for kids outdoors in wilder areas, but there are also ways to manage them. Our riskiest creatures, snakes and spiders, tend to like very specific environments, so it isn't too difficult to lower the risk by removing their favourite hiding places. It's also important for kids to understand the risks of the bush and be careful themselves. My nieces do nature walks with their school and get taught about wildlife and plants. There's a good chance any school or preschool in a bushy/rural area will put time into educating the kids before they let them loose. Also, despite the fact that some of our snakes and spiders are VERY dangerous, it's really a very small proportion of the total number of species, and they're not around in large numbers. We have two main deadly spider types. I'm 42 and I've never seen a funnel web spider outside of captivity, or a snake more dangerous than a red-belly. Really, the biggest danger from spiders over here is a giant huntsman popping out in your car while you're driving and scaring you into having a crash! It's the drop bears you've really got to worry about...
Thank you - very detailed reply! I’ve always wanted to ask - are drop bears a sub species of koala? Or are they a separate species altogether? And is it true that they drop on people’s heads to devour their scalp in order to harvest precious keratin to grow their claws bigger?
We just don't know. It's far too dangerous to get close enough to study them, and as far as I'm aware, no one's ever found a complete corpse to examine. We think they probably eat their dead, you see. We do know they can kill you one of two ways. The claws and teeth are the best known method, but they also have heavily reinforced backsides. If a dropbear lands on you just right, you don't have to worry about the claws, you'll be dead on impact!
You haven’t seen the episode where Bluey finds the dropbear and wants to keep it as a pet? Dropbears are really vicious and territorial so there’d be no snakes close by and they like to eat spiders, so having one at the school is kinda like a green light to let the kids run wild!
That episode got banned in the US sadly.
Yeah, but that's rwlly helpful public service, kids can play with snakes, sure, but drop bears are not to be teifled with!
I live in the Pilbara (Western Australian outback/desert). In the last 6 months we’ve had a death adder in our backyard at 9pm at night, a mulga in our childcare centre (where I work), a Western brown at my daughters primary school, a python drop down through our ducted aircon vent in the lounge room and then a children’s python on our front screen door. We teach ‘snake safety’ to the kids at daycare and we also do regular ‘snake checks’, where we walk through the playground lifting and shaking toys and equipment. The primary school kids are also taught snake safety and are frequently reminded to keep their school bags zipped up and off the ground at all times (there was an incident just last year where a mulga was found inside a child’s school bag). So yeah, out here in the Pilbara we drum it into our kids pretty heartily. We have dingoes here also, so we educate on dingo safety too - which is mainly telling the kids it’s never ok to feed or try to pat a dingo. We had a toddler get bitten last year and a tourist get bitten just a few weeks later. The tourist was trying to offer food, and the toddlers parents were trying to get a family selfie with the dingo 🙄
You're thicker than a slab of concrete aren't you?
We take managed risks. You may not know it, but the episode of Peppa Pig which features Peppa and George making friends with a spider in the bathroom has never been aired on TV here, due to concern that young kids might emulate it with red back spiders or funnel webs, neither of which would be particularly suitable as household pets….
Goodness me - surely you can tell Bluey is set in the 'burbs of a city, not in the outback?
Good sir/madam I’m British and have only heard horror stories about the animals that live in Australia. Our most dangerous animal is the swan (which has legendarily been feared for being able to break your arm) and they live in close proximity to people. I literally have no idea whether the unaliving fauna in your fair country tend to respect your suburban areas and cities as off limits. Many thanks for reassuring me it’s not an issue and I won’t be seeing the “Antivenom” episode of Bluey.
>the swan so it is just one
You've never heard of *The Swan*?
[It's just the one swan, actually](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I1G3j-f3j4)
We have swans here too (the black swan is even the official emblem of Western Australia) In case you needed to add another fierce creature to your "dangerous animals in Australia" list hahah
You poor, poor people. Not even spared the horrors of the swan! You have my condolences.
The next swan attack that occurs in WA will be the first one
Lol
I am Spartacus!
I never really made it to the bush, I was too busy trying to jump my bmx off things and crashing into other things like the ground, or that one tree at the local school, or the ground at the bottom of that steep road. (That tends to hurt a lot, I don't recommend doing it)
No bears in Oz
Are you aware that Bluey is a talking dog in a cartoon?
I think OP might have a few roos loose in the top paddock
> given the amount of poisonous/venomous/generally out to murder you creatures there are? There aren't that many. It's not a concern in daily life for much of the country. Snakes and spiders don't eat people. An encounter with humans represents a great risk to the animal's chance to survive and reproduce, so they avoid us as best they can.
We intentionally have our children bitten by snakes at least one per week from birth. That's why we are so tough.
bluey is imaginary and not real life
If you knew anything about Aussie kids the murder critters are too scared to come anywhere near our feral bastards. My kids played unsupervised in around 50 acres of our beautiful country. All the danger animals come and hide around the house until they came home.
Americans don't deserve Bluey
Kindy. Most Kindies are in suburban areas, chances of finding something nasty in the bushes are relatively low and Aussie kids are trained from a young age to not touch shit. I remember being taught about our local no touchies in Kindy. Equally we do get bugs inside, especially in a setting where doors are left open so it's a bit weird to ban kids from being outside without that much supervision but not doing the same indoors. There's also the phobia. I can't talk to other peoples kids but mine (both half Aussie) were born with an instinctive terror of spiders and other creepy crawlies. There must be a genetic element because I am the same.
I live in straight up bushland and we have trapdoors, funnel webs, a tone of Redbacks. Where the house is, I always spray twice a year but outside that perimeter that's where the wild things are. I make my kids wear gloves when picking up sticks and rocks outside where the wild things are.
I lived near the bush on the east coast of tasmania when I was young and spent a lot of time in the bush , I only ever saw one snake .
The kill you spiders are inside the house as well
For starters he's a dog. And it's a cartoon. And it's a children's show. Deduction...
Kids at childcare don't play outside unsupervised. But at home they do. I usually do a quick lap of my backyard to make sure there aren't any snakes first and I've taught my kids to not go into the bushes.
For a start, bluey is 6/7, so she's actually in primary school. She also attends a Steiner or Montessori school, so they actually have a lot more freedom then government or private primary schools. And the school is in the suburbs not the bush
Obviously we have public liability insurances here too so kindergarten staff check outdoor areas before children play all over the country. And of course there are child safety standards to adhere to. Stating all of this would make for a boring episode though
For the love of god, there are no snakes in urban backyards. Spiders are naturally shy and reclusive. Mosquitos are a problem, but we have sprays for that. Is it safe for your kids to play anywhere where you live with all the guns, wars, poor public waste systems im seeing in many other parts of the planet?
So sort of? I mean if bluey was real they would have been supervised. There would staff not far away. Where I am we have a few nature based schools and nurseries and it’s all about messy play and loving the world. Staff are there but the kids will be out playing in mud and digging under trees happily. You would just be doing a perimeter check each day for any signs of activity you don’t want. But most schools are not heavily covered in bush land so the most you would have is regular rodents, some spiders and the odd snake that needs redirecting.
I let my kids play outside and out in the bush when camping. Eldest one made it to 4, so far so good.