[ WP ] There is a reason the wildlife in Australia is so dangerous .

From atop Ayers Rock Australia seems red, endless and lifeless, like some displaced piece of Mars. 
 
 `` There's life everywhere'', Alice tells me, gesturing at the desert. Her hat's made of serpent skin. Her own skin could just as well be, too. `` Nasty, vicious life. Most of it is venomous or poisonous -- - I do n't recall fhe difference, but most are both. Trouser snakes, anklebiter spiders, drop bears, stinger dingos, scorpion rats, vampire'roos -- - and get to the ocean, and the sea kittens will eat you alive.'' 
 
 I shudder, and she leers at me. `` The people ai n't entirely harmless either.'' 
 
 `` W -- - what does this have to do with -- -'' 
 
 I wave a hesitant hand downwards. 
 
 `` Right. Keep up, I'll show you, London boy.'' 
 
 And so I follow Ms. Springs of the Bushmaster Service to the depths of Ayers Rock, down a narrow tunnel, its walls full of aboriginal graffiti -- - skulls, screaming faces, dismembered corpses, people and animals running -- - warnings, or some forgotten prehistory of shock rock. 
 
 The tunnel's end is dark, chill, and red. There are no wall-pictures in this hall, only irregular angles of rock, as if set down by a Mother Nature who did n't want to linger here. 
 
 Then there's the door. 
 
 `` So you found this...'' 
 
 She -- - Alice -- - I'm unsure how formal I should be -- - shrugs. `` Found, maybe thirty years ago. Told anybody... there are strange types in the Service. Me, I heard about this last week, when Bruce vanished.'' 
 
 `` He's the, um, the one who went through this door?'' 
 
 She scowls, as if about to give me a dissertation on the local dearth of Bruces, and then nods. `` Yep. And came back raving. Hair all white. Babbling, shaking, drooling, trembling -- - like a limey on vegemite, begging your pardon, sir.'' 
 
 `` Shush. And you...'' 
 
 `` I looked in.'' She puts a hand on the doorknob. The door's metal, rust-red, and looks older than the Rock itself. `` And it was like he said. So I thought, we need a special kind of a guy...'' 
 
 `` And that's me.'' 
 
 `` Right. So, you ready, London boy?'' 
 
 `` Show me.'' 
 
 She swings the door open, and I see the truth about Australia, the reason why it is a desert of deadly things, dynamite fishers and trouser snakes and drop bears, all kinds of crazed, off monsters, full of malicious vitality. 
 
 Ayers Rock is n't a rock at all. 
 
 It's a vast, rust-encrusted, muck-covered, aeons-disfigured conning tower, and Australia is a UFO. 
 
 `` It makes sense'', Alice Springs says behind me. `` All the wildlife's as if designed to tell you to fuck off... because it is.''
