As a resident of Australia I have always liked that I live in the middle of a contential plate that has not been under a mile of ice in the recent past. Sure we lack majestic mountains, but geological stability is a nice alternative.
I used to work for a structural engineering firm here in New Zealand, and we had to bring in a whole lot of Australian Engineers to meet the workload of assessing buildings in Christchurch after the Earthquake. They said that engineering in Australia is dull and easy compared to in NZ, which is fine until something happens.
Back in 89 there was a comparatively minor Earthquake in Newcastle which resulted in a disproportionate amount of damage and unfortunate loss of life.
I'd kind of rather be sitting in a base isolated modern NZ building in a large earthquake than a non earthquake sound building in another country in a minor earthquake. Of course if I never have to live through another earthquake I'd be most happy.
Be safe. :)
Maintaining fire breaks and doing controlled burns are a big part of life for a lot of country people. Its not entirely uncommon for people to have backup generators and a pump specifically so they can still pump water in the event of a fire and power has been lost. Many homes that are surrounded by bush sit on their own little island of barren ground that has been cleared of virtually all vegetation.
It freaks out me out seeing TV shows from the US in particular where they have houses surrounded by trees with trees literally hanging over the house. The road leading out also has a beautiful canopy of trees right against the side of the road. They look like deathtraps to me but presumably they don't live in a walk-in tinderbox like some parts of Australia.
But the house is still surrounded by trees, including a couple of giant maples in the back yard which need topping, then again this is in city neighborhood with 0.06 or a bit more hectare residential lots, without a good fire fighting service it would have eventually gotten burned out one way or another. We've even got one city, Somerville, MA, which has enough fuel density in its residential buildings to support a true firestorm (and I've watched their firefighters in action, they's good).
On the other hand, out in the drier western part of the country, in plenty of it people ought to take the sorts of precautions you outline, but of course many are complacent and expect the government to come to their rescue, are just willing to make the tradeoffs (many areas aren't that dry), or I'm sure in some cases are limited by zoning from doing the smart thing.
Here we also had many decades of insane government forestry polices where simply stopping all fires was the paradigm. You can guess what the eventual result was, as well as how dicey trying to do the first controlled burn of a fire suppressed area is....
It's amazing what people will put up with :)
Yeah, if you grow up with the threat, it's not that big a deal until one hits.
In Osaka I was called to the checkout, where in typical Japanese efficiency they said there were some issues at Frankfurt and they had already printed my ticket for my next flight. This was a life saver.
Anyway, it turns out there was a huge snow storm and Frankfurt was having to cancel 500 flights a day. The place was like a refugee camp with thousands of people sleeping on stretchers, etc. The queue to talk to anyone or checkin lasted for hours, and people couldn't leave the airport because if your name was called for a flight you had to be there to take it. Every single flight in Europe's busiest airport were grounded except the Russians, the biggest snow storm in years was nothing and I only had to wait a couple of hours, my friend was there for a couple of days. So it really is amazing what you're used to.
Melbourne, Canberra and Perth look to be the most risky [1].
1. http://www.ga.gov.au/interactive-maps/#/theme/hazards/map/ea...
More seriously, didn't Australia previously have some geological activity? I've heard of lava tubes near Cairns and have visited the Sunshine Coast where I believe there are (dormant?) volcanos?
That's the secret Australians don't want you to know!
Most of our native wildlife is pretty sleepy and shy - there's only a couple of snakes that are aggressive; most run (slither?) away from humans. Apart from that, crocodiles are really only the remaining aggressive land animal, but there's not a lot of overlap between a population map of humans vs crocodiles here.
Dingoes, fair enough, I missed those. They're opportunistic though, and you have to go looking for reports on attacks (apart from the obvious one, which was hard to escape the media frenzy of...). Dingo attacks a but a drop in the ocean compared to other (pet) dog attacks here.
The most dangerous mammal in North America is...Bambi. The U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that white-tailed deer kill around 130 Americans each year simply by causing car accidents. In 1994, these predator deer had a banner year, causing 211 human deaths in car wrecks.
There are about 1.5 million deer/vehicle collisions annually, resulting in 29,000 human injuries and more than $1 billion in insurance claims in addition to the death toll.
And here's Wikipedia on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deer%E2%80%93vehicle_collision... They even kill around 20/year in Germany.
...or when your backyard tries to swallow you: https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2016/aug/02/news-foo...
That is an anecdote obviously, not a widespread danger.
The last person that died from a spider bite was in 1979. Snakes and spiders mostly just want to left alone. Crocodiles and marine stingers only exist in the tropics, and Sharks only eat ocean swimmers.
I grew up very close to native bush land on the outskirts of Sydney and have never been 'prey' to another creature while playing in the bush.
Of course, I wouldn't have done that if drop-bears [1] were around though.
Survivor bias, mate.
There was one this year, actually[1]. Non-fatal bites are more common, but there's no official statistics because it's not a reportable medical emergency.
Folks that live near bushland of any variety know to do the basics like not sticking your fingers into areas you can't see, and not weeding/digging in the garden within the Sydney region with bare hands.
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/12/young-man-dies-af...
(BTH, this requires only one such fatal crash because nobody in Australia has died from a spider bite since 1979).