I'm certainly getting more than enough of my share of the local wildlife here. I mean, Emus, Roos, Ekidnas - but last night beat it all: A two meter long Black-Headed Python crawled into my room - and I slept right through it!

What happened was this: The girl who was sleeping on the bunk below mine was looking up in the middle of the night and saw this huge snake making her way along the wall and apparently right towards my bed. She told me she felt like screaming (can't blame her) but then remembered that I was sleeping. So instead of waking me up (pretty considerate, ey), she just woke her boyfriend who then grabbed the snake and took her out to the maintainance shed. There he put a towel on top of the bucket, secured it and pinned a notice on top "Large Black Headed Python inside. Don't open bucket. Will be picked up tomorrow by Darreck, room 16". How cool is that????

I know it sounds pretty unbelievable and normally I would have assumed that they were merely pulling my leg. But I saw the snake and the sign and the bucket and I'm pretty sure that this is actually what happened! Now, Pythons are of course not dangerous. And this one probably only came in cause it was cold outside. But cold or not - imagine waking up and finding a big, big snake cuddling on your belly. Uaaahhhh.

After this experience I sortof tried to discuss the rent with the management, but they wouldn't have any of it. Damn.

Car things

I also managed to get my windscreen fixed. All in all it came to 286 AUD. Bad but not as bad as I had feared. Besides, it would have been illegal for me to drive like that and the insurance might not have paid in case of an accident. After all the vehicle was not road worth any longer. Unfortuantely there were some new problems with the car this morning - and this after having behaved so well for the last 2.000 km. The battery is probably dead - we had to push-start it. Well, I have an appointment with the garage on monday where they'll take a look at it. Sigh.

Tropical paradise? My ass!

Broome is supposedly the tropical paradise of Australia. Not at the moment, though: according to the weather forecast the weather will continue to be cold (I'm wearing a sweater!) and rainy with occasional thunderstroms until at least tuesday. And this is the dry season! Fortunately at least internet-access is cheap: 30 AUD if you but ten hours. That's the cheapest since Perth. I also met two pretty cool girls again that I had last seen in Tom Price, so all in all all's well.

On the web:
Black-Headed Python