None of us would admit to having brought the cricket bat. We couldn’t understand what it was doing there. We phoned room service to bring us up some beers and also to take the cricket bat away but they didn’t want it. The guy from room service said that _if we were really going to look for man-eating lizards maybe the cricket bat would be a handy thing to have.
‘If you find you’ve got a dragon charging towards you at thirty miles an hour snapping its teeth you can always drive it defensively through the covers,’ he said, deposited the beers and left:
We hid the cricket bat under the bed, opened the beers, and let Mark explain something of what we were in for.
‘For centuries,’ he said, ‘the Chinese told stories of great scaly man-eating monsters with fiery breath, but they were thought to be nothing more than myths and fanciful imaginings. Old sailors would tell of them, and would write ‘Here be dragons’ on their maps when they saw a land they didn’t at all like the look of.
‘And then, at the beginning of this century, a pioneering Dutch aviator was attempting to island hop his way along the Indonesian archipelago to Australia when he had engine trouble and had to crash land his plane on the tiny island of Komodo. He survived the crash but his plane didn’t.
‘He went to search for water. As he was searching he found a strange wide track on the sandy shore, followed the track, and suddenly found himself confronted with something that he, also, didn’t at all like the look of. It appeared to be a great scaly man-eating monster, fully ten feet long. What he was looking at was the thing we are going to look for – the Komodo dragon lizard.’
‘Did he survive? I asked, going straight for the point.
‘Yes, he did, though his reputation didn’t. He stayed alive for three months, and then was rescued. But when he went home, everyone thought he was mad and nobody believed a word of it.’
‘So were the Komodo dragons the origin of the Chinese dragon myths?
‘Well, nobody really knows, of course. At least, I don’t. But it certainly seems like a possibility. It’s a large creature with scales, it’s a man-eater, and though it doesn’t actually breathe fire, it does have the worst breath of any creature known to man. But there’s something else you should know about the island as well.’
‘What?’
‘Have another beer first.’
I did.
There are,’ said mark, ‘more poisonous snakes per square metre of ground on Komodo than on any equivalent area on earth.’
There is in Melbourne a man who probably knows more about poisonous snakes than anyone else on earth. His name is Dr Struan Sutherland, and he has devoted his entire life to a study of venom.
‘And I’m bored with talking about it,’ he said when we went along to see him the next morning, laden with tape recorders and note books. ‘Can’t stand all these poisonous creatures, all these snakes and insects and fish and things. Wretched things, biting everybody. And then people expect me to tell them what to do about it. I’ll tell them what to do. Don’t get bitten in the first place. That’s the answer. I’ve had enough of telling people all the time. Hydroponics, now, that’s interesting. Talk to you all you like about hydroponics. Fascinating stuff, growing plants artificially in water, very interesting technique. We’ll need to know all about it if we’re going to go to Mars and places. Where did you say you were going?’
‘Komodo.’
‘Well, don’t get bitten, that’s all I can say. And don’t come running to me if you do because you won’t get here in time and anyway I’ve got enough on my plate. Look at this office. Full of poisonous animals all over the place. See this tank? It’s full of fire ants. Venomous little creatures, what are we going to do about them? Anyway, I got some little cakes in in case you were hungry. Would you like some little cakes? I can’t remember where I put them. There’s some tea but it’s not very good. Sit down for heaven’s sake.