Drop Bears

I seem to be becoming a Blogosphere expert on all things Australian. Several people have visited my blog lately, looking for information on Drop Bears. There is only a passing mention of them in my post about Crooked Mick and the Speewah.

Now some may feel that Crooked Mick and the Speewah are a bit over the top, but every word is true and vouched for by Truthful Jones. So I will explain a little more about these mysterious and dangerous carnivores. Australia is home to many species which are unique to Australia. Examples of these species are; echidnas, wombats, koalas, kangaroos, bunyips, wallabies, bandicoots and potoroos. Another animal unique to Australia is the Drop Bear.

An arboreal, (tree dwelling) carnivorous mammal of Australia, it is scientifically named, by some taxonomists, “Phascolarctus Hodgsonii”, and by others “Phascolarctus Bityness”. It reaches around 4 feet in height. Some believe it has evolved from a line similar to koalas. They are covered in a dense fur, which can range from almost black, through a reddish pelt in the Inland Desert Drop Bear to the Alpine Drop Bear’s snowy white coat. For a fuller description of the various sub-species of Drop Bears, including the Common, Burrowing, Aquatic and Alpine, I refer you to Thommo’s site as he, due to his work searching for Thylacines, the world expert on Drop Bears.
There is even a TV commercial about Drop Bears

so it can be seen that they are a very real part of the Australian landscape and consciousness.

Wikipedia follow the official Australian Government line in order to avoid scaring the tourists who provide a major proportion of the National Gross Domestic Product, now that most Australian companies are now owned offshore. You can be fined up to $5,000, or jailed for a period of six months just for warning a tourist about the dropbear menace.

Very few people have actually seen a Drop Bear and lived to tell the tail. Trust me, Drop Bears exist and cause losses amongst our tourists each year. Aussies are smart enough to avoid the trees in which drop bears live. Well, almost all Aussies. There is a group, mainly found in parts of Melbourne, known as “The Collingwood Supporters” who are a tasty treat for these vicious predators. There are rumours of photographs of Drop Bears but most are obvious fakes. This photo is the most credible. It was found in an abandoned camera and the owner has never been seen to this day.

It is claimed that Vegemite (a black foodstuff, high in vitamin B, manufactured as a joke to play on tourists) is a good Dropbear repellent when applied to the face and neck. I find this very difficult to believe, but cannot disprove it. The fact is that the only true Dropbear repellent is Aeroguard. It is 100% effective, and not a single confirmed dropbear killing has been recorded against a person protected with Aeroguard. This is a photo of an alleged Drop Bear survivor. I have my doubts about its authenticity. It seems more like a Bunyip bite. But that is another story.

Anyway, that is the fair dinkum truth about Drop Bears.
I am risking a severe criminal record by publishing this information, so, please, if you are an overseas tourist, don’t read it. It is a sufficient defence in law that no foreign tourist has read the offending document and that it was published only for domestic information. Although I would like to know who taught the domestics to read!
Note: These photographs were not taken by the author. He is only using them as illustrations. Apart from anything else, he is going nowhere near a Drop Bear.