GCC student Brady Smith talks about wildlife down under

Brady Smith arrived here from Australia in mid-August, long before cold temperatures and snow enveloped the region. So it wasn't surprising to hear him say, "I love it here." Asked how he's handling the sudden climate change, he stated, "I'm slowly getting used to it."

Brady was recruited from the land down under by GCC soccer coach Ken Gavin. Once the soccer season ended, he made his way to the college pool where he not only swims for the Cougars, he also works as a lifeguard. (Brady is one of five international students on coach Mike Kroll's swim team.)

"I love swimming," he said. "I was a swimmer for my school back home."  A phys-ed major aspiring to be an athletic trainer, Brady hails from the city of Brisbane in Queensland, located in Eastern Australia. Shortly after meeting Brady, I asked him about the toxic and deadly creatures that inhabit the Australian continent. I had read of and seen on the nature channel that of the 10 deadliest snakes in the world, nine are found on the Australian mainland. The other being a sea snake found in the waters off the Australian coast. I wanted to know, were they really as numerous and deadly as I'd heard - or was it a case of sensationalism and TV hype.

"They're for real," he said.

He then mentioned a few species of poisonous snakes with which he's familiar; the King brown, the taipan and the tiger snake. The brown and its subspecies have been known to inhabit populated areas, making it particularly dangerous. And while deadly reptiles garner most of the attention, spiders are very high on Brady's list of critters to be avoided, most notably the red-black and funnel web spiders.

"I don't like spiders," he said with emphasis. "My parents were having a barbecue and one of my mom's friends was bitten by a red-black spider."

(The Australian red-black is closely related to our black widow -- black with a red marking on the abdomen and it often cannibalizes the male after mating. They are also highly venomous.)

"She got pretty sick," he said of spider bite victim. "She had to be hospitalized -- but she made it." 

Asked about his outdoor pursuits back home, Brady said he did some fishing and snorkeling, the latter including a bit of spearfishing. But surfing is his first love.

"I didn't think I'd miss surfing so much. I surfed every day back home." This prompted the obvious question, "Have you had any encounters with sharks?" The look on his face seemed to say, "I'm glad you asked."

"I was with two buddies," he began, "we were surfing off Mujimba Beach. There's an island that's a 25 or 30 minute paddle out to sea. It's called Old Woman Island. About 20 minutes into the paddle, a big fish appeared maybe 15 meters away. It was a tiger shark. We knew it was a tiger because of the spots on its dorsal fin."

Thankfully, the shark in this instance was a bit curious and nothing more -- unlike his next shark encounter.

"A month later, off that same beach, four of us were just sitting on our boards about 50 or 60 meters offshore when a bull shark swam below us. I saw the shadow and told my buddies, "Swim in! Swim in!.....There's only one reason you say "swim in," so no one asked - they just paddled in."

We talked briefly about a few of the other poisonous creatures in and around Brady's homeland. One was the blue-ringed octopus, about the size of a golf ball, very pretty to look at and highly venomous to the touch. And the stone fish, so named because they are so perfectly camouflaged they look like a rock on the bottom. As a result, barefoot bathers sometimes step on them, receiving a strong dose of poison from the spines of their dorsal fin.

It was only last Thursday -- Friday in Australia -- when Brady's father found a 6 or 7 foot carpet python curled up on the patio. In relating this incident, Brady didn't even raise an eyebrow -- nothing out of the ordinary.

"Dad is big on fishing. He likes to fish off the beach. He's caught some big sharks that way," said Brady. "He likes fishing off the beach at Fraser Island - that's where the purebred dingoes (wild dogs) live. It's the only place in the world where the purebred dingoes reproduce. Anyway, while at Fraser Island dad once brought a tourist bus full of Asians to a stop so they could watch him fight a bronze whaler." (I later learned a bronze whaler is known in other parts of the world as a Copper or Narrow-toothed shark)

With the semester drawing to a close, Brady will be heading back home for a reunion with his family; parents Ken and Shelley Smith and younger brothers Lewis and Darcy. Thankfully for Brady, summer down under is just getting under way and he will no doubt find time to do some surfing.