To not want to fly to Australia?

[Reluctantflyer]

Our DC is working in Australia for a couple of years, and DH is understandably very keen to visit.
I'd absolutely love to spend time with our wonderful DC and miss them like crazy, but am feeling quite stressed by the prospect of:

A long long flight when I really don't like flying (had bad experience with plane being struck by lightning a few years ago). I've never flown for longer than 5 hours.

Being cramped on an airplane - I can't sleep at the best of times and can get quite anxious in crowded places. A bed would be amazing but business class is £5000+ per seat!

Snakes, jellyfish, crocodiles and dengue fever etc.
Heat and sun- I can't go out in the sun due to previous skin cancer.

The cost- DH thinks there is no point going for less than 3 weeks. We usually go on holiday for a week in Europe so this would be eye-watering by comparison.

Can anyone talk me down from not really wanting to go?
I'm assuming that flying is the only way to go - we can both take 3 weeks off work if needed.

I know I sound like a right curmudgeon, but it was never on my list of places I would otherwise go or spend our limited savings on. I like Scandinavia....

Any tips for making the journey and the trip less awful?

OP is going to tropical north Queensland. That is indeed where crocodiles live in rivers and estuaries, and there are jellyfish in the sea, bird eating spiders, cane toads, bull ants and all manner of other critters which are somehow larger and more unpleasant than they ought to be. Mosquito-borne diseases are rare but not unheard of.

The thing is, none of these are an issue in an everyday situation.

Sure, if you are fishing in a tinny in these areas, or decide to go swimming in a water hole in a croc area you may have an issue. Otherwise, you pretty much need to be in a tourist boat for that specific purpose to have them near you.

Same for stingers. If you go at certain times of the year, then either swim in areas with stinger nets or wear a stinger suit (can hire them cheaply in areas that have stingers).

Wear mozzie spray and suitable clothes of an evening or if going into high mozzie areas. Not rocket science.

You won’t come across snakes, or others mentioned, in your day to day travels if you are in an urban situation. Sure, if you are staying in the bush/rainforest but otherwise not generally.

Get some sedatives and sleep through the journey, I'm with you on this one, it looks an amazing country, but the flight and spiders would put me right off going.

For fucks sake. I’m from tropical North Queensland. I’m going to refuse to ever go to Canada because obviously I’ll be eaten by a polar bear. Lots of African countries are out, because those damn lions will get me the minute I step off the plane. And the hippos in the hotel pools! I’m never, ever going back to London because terrorists will blow me up on the tube. United States- will be devoured by grizzlies and mountain lions and whacked with MAGA caps. Iceland- OMG there’s active volcanos. Mexico- the drug cartels will gun me down (probably the most realistic scenario) South America- the jaguars will be driving the taxis.

The ignorance on this thread.

crocodiles- don’t swim in their habitat. It’s actually really easy to avoid them. Amazingly, only about 1 person is killed every third year or so and every single death was avoidable by using common sense. Millions of people swim perfectly happily in far north waters every year.
dengue fever- use inspect repellent like a normal person
snakes- I love them. Actively seek them out and see maybe two harmless tree snakes or pythons a year. Most disappointing
jellyfish- real easy. Wear a stinger suit. All the reef tour companies lend them out, or you can buy one cheaply. Or don’t go ocean swimming in stinger season.
Uncomfortable in long haul- can’t help, it sucks.

Oh and spiders. Red backed spiders are very rare in the tropics. They are a dry land spider. No-one has died from a red back bite for 50 years. Funnel webs- the bad one is the Sydney funnel web. They are not in North Queensland. No-one has died from a bite since the early 1980s.

You a a million times more likely to die driving to your local chippy than from a bite from an Australian spider.

Yes I have. It’s not the bites at all. I am completely phobic full stop and just the sight of a web will freak me out.
My cousin is not in an urban area, he works in a field based role often in the outback. His social media is full of hideous spider/web pictures, I think they are Bark spiders? He’s in Northern Territory now. They move around a fair bit often living in a camper van but he’s never anywhere I’d want to visit.

I just don’t want to go- there’s absolutely nothing about Australia that appeals to me. The climate, the landscape etc. If my DD decides to live there then I’d force myself to go, but not for anyone else.

I like NZ though. I have friends there. It’s beautiful. Far fewer spiders!

I was wondering if someone would mention the drop bears. Sneaky bastards they are. OP you'd better be careful, they especially love tourists.

Australian Museum has some info on them here...

https://australian.museum/learn/animals/mammals/drop-bear/

And an interesting article on how they love tourists...

https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2021/04/drop-bears-target-tourists-study-says/

You forgot drop bears though. Deadly fuckers.

Oh yes @HoppingPavlova I spent my teenage years avoiding them.

Re. Spiders: this is what insect spray is for.

Every time I go back to Australia, I forget that the really annoying things are the insects: flies, mosquitos and cockroaches.

And then I go to the supermarket and find several shelves fill of various repellents, and I spray the fuckers.

You're overthinking it OP!

Er, you may need to take a closer look at a map if you think anything south of Cairns is 'not quite sub-tropical'.

Anything north of the Tropic of Capricorn is the tropics, and that runs approx 1000km south of Cairns.

Get on the plane and go, break the journey in Singapore, fly a decent airline like Singapore. It's been a fantastic time in Oz, we love going there.

The climate and landscape is different all over Australia. Not directing this at you but so many people seem to think that all of Australia is hot arid desert and have no idea that it's extremely urbanised and the weather and landscape is as different in Tasmania as it is the Northern Territory.

OP, As for the deadly animals, yes in some areas you do need to be careful but there are always signs. Obey those signs and you'll be fine. Also pay attention to what the locals do. If no one is swimming at a certain beach then it's for a good reason. 26 million of us Aussies are living just fine with our animals (ok there are a few dickheads) but if our lives aren't in danger from them every day then you'll be fine too. Pretty much the deadliest thing here is the sun but wear a hat and sunblock and you'll be good to go.

I'm at those - who have never been - dismissing the whole of the country out of hand! It's a beautiful and incredibly varied place. So narrow minded.

👏 completely agree!

If no one is swimming at a certain beach then it's for a good reason

On one visit I went to Fraser Is with my mother. We were on a tour bus driving along a beach where the surf was amazing and someone asked the tour bloke why was no-one surfing, was it because of the sharks? the reply was with the current under those waves, you'd be in Fiji before the sharks could catch you.

Oh yes, let’s add deadly currents to the list of things that will kill you. Fire ants? Tasmanian Devils? (If you are in Tasmania and you are in an area so remote that there are still some left in the wild that you happen to stumble upon one, it may bite you and it would probably become infected. That might kill you before you could toddle your sunburnt self to help.)
Seriously people, if you are afraid to go further than your local pub because you expect to be met off the plane by a flock of deadlies as though you were some kind of celebrity being met by paparazzi “Oh look! There she is!!! Look at the clammy blue skin!!! An English woman!!! Let’s kill her, Mates!!! Raaaaaaaah” You might as well just stay at home and read William’s book. Have a small life.

Agree. It's a huge country and yet so many posters think it's the same all over. Even those who visited Sydney/Melbourne/wherever in 1980 somehow think they are experts on the whole country. Narrow minded indeed

Why are you all so offended though? I’ve lived in the suburbs and also the most rural places you could imagine. I couldn’t care less what people think of the place.

Why are you all so offended though? I’ve lived in the suburbs and also the most rural places you could imagine. I couldn’t care less what people think of the place.

Beacuse some of us are very fed up of the "anywhere but the UK (actually, more specifically England)" is rubbish nonsense which keeps being spouted on here. It's not just Australia, any other country is fair game too, but it has been getting a lot of both criticism and ridiculous comments recently. Until I started following MN I had no idea just how many narrow/closed minded people there still are in this world!

I’m with you to an extent, it can be very strange here. I don’t think MN is a great indicator of the masses though.

Not offended. Confused, though,
Haven’t been here that long, don’t log in every day, but it seems there’s been about a thread a fortnight about expressing some quote oddly skewed perceptions of all the terrible dangers of Australia. Don’t know if that’s average, above or below. Does no one read the previous threads? What are you reading / watchiing / listening to?
I have to admit, I don’t watch Home and Away, and haven’t watched Neigbours since before Kylie and Jason were married so not familiar with the latest plot lines….is it coming from those, or what? Or is it just parochialism? Does it extend to other nations? Curiouser and curiouser.

When I lived in Australia my mum felt the same about the flight but did it and it opened the world for her. I’d recommend Singapore Airlines as they were always great.
As for the rest you are overreacting. Don’t have issues with crocs etc on a daily basis, I promise. Go… once in a lifetime opportunity, you won’t regret it!

Your DC will appreciate you going more than you realise. My DM hates flying. I was living in Spain for a year or so in 2005/6 and my parents flew out to visit me, to see where I was living, and I valued that so much especially given my DM’s fear of flying. That was the last time she flew, not been on a plane since, but she did that for me and to engage in a big life experience for me of living abroad. I would encourage you to find a way to do it. Long haul planes are generally more comfortable than short haul ones and you can go premium econ/extra leg room and build in stop overs.

I think it's social media Denim. There is a "hilarious" post every week showing some monstrous spider and some Australian man being overly casual about it, or a news story about a child saved from a shark or something. Steve Irwin. etc etc.

DH and I moved to the US west coast for a few years. He has a great relationship with his lovely PIL. They didn't want to travel out, and tbh the idea that we would expect them to pay hundreds if not thousands to do so never crossed our minds.

No-one was hurt, distraught, upset. They just kept in touch by phone and were delighted to see them when we got back. These things don't have to be dramas!