Danger at every turn?

Some old bloke has been stung by a sting ray at Main Beach. The details are sketchy as you can see if you bother to open the link.

http://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/news/gold-coast/man-72-stung-by-stingray-at-main-beach/story-fnj94idh-1227636547201

I just don't know how that happens. The water here in the canals and the river and the beach is so clear, and let's face it a sting ray is not too tiny weeny, that all I could think of was 'Should have gone to Specsavers'. Makes their ad at the beach volley ball, where that good looking but presumably blind bloke king hits a pigeon, well it makes it look possible.

We see stingrays in the canal from time to time, and there is certainly evidence of 'em sort of lumbered into the sand making a body sized pit which they leave behind at low tide.

I am not jumping into swim in the canal!

Kids do of course. As the holidays begin so too has the parade of rather indulged pre teens in their tinnys, hooning around dragging behind them some poor hapless mate all too often sitting on one of those ring things, presenting their pert little arses to all the dangers of the deep. I wonder if their parents know or care.

Steve and I discussed getting a canoe or a some other little paddle along vessel that could possibly hold us up, and apart from the fact that we seriously wondered about how much laziness we'd have to shake off to bother with it all, we also considered the very real possibility of falling out of it in the middle of the canal and then getting eaten up by a hungry if not to terribly discerning bullshark. We decided perhaps NOT.

I don't know anyone who has actually seen a bullshark in the canal, or caught one, or who has any first hand knowledge of a sighting, but the bloody things make the local news all the time, and the cynic in me wonders who profits from keeping people out of the water. Certainly when I was girl - back when cars were horses and we all peed outside, I swam in the canals all the time. Dad had a canoe that I would pop out on so I could perv into other people's backyards and I never worried that I would fall out, partly cos I was a kid and they don't plan well for disaster and partly because it wouldn't matter anyway cos I could swim up a storm and I'd just get back into it.

But whether all the shark talk and now the sting ray talk is all just urban legend or there is a very real danger out there, it is immaterial in the end because we are just too appalling lazy to clamber into a skinny bit of plastic and paddle ourselves around.

Ho hum, pass the chips.http://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/news/gold-coast/man-72-stung-by-stingray-at-main-beach/story-fnj94idh-122763654720