87. Box Jellyfish

I was wondering along a beach in Newcastle when I came across hundreds of these washed up on the shore. I realise that the tentacles can grow to 30 metres so I’m assuming that these were babies and that the recent stormy weather had blown them up on shore. They are actually quite pretty and take a good photo but I didn’t temp fate by touching them to find out if the babies still sting as painfully as their parents.

As with all things that I find fascinating about Australia, the locals seemed not to care. There was a group of kids walking along the beach in bare feet and the “blue bottles” seemed not to bother them. In fact, they were standing on the air bladders to make them pop, seemingly without any fear of being stung. Crazy Aussie kids. Mind you, Newcastle is a bit of a dive so the children were probably out of their heads on crystal meth!