When my friend Chris Slough moved from London to Sydney back in 2000, one of his leaving presents was a book called Dangerous Creatures of Australia. It was supposed to be a joke, but he really should have taken it seriously. Within weeks of his arrival Chris was fighting for his life after being stung by one of the world's most venomous animals, a box jellyfish. It was the height of summer and Chris and a bunch of friends had hired a yacht to go out to the Whitsundays, a cluster of tropical islands off the coast of Queensland. They were anchored about 200 metres offshore, preparing for the next day's sail when Chris discovered that a rotor under the boat was stuck. So he dived in to fix it. That's when it got him. "I felt a couple of little stings on my chest," he says, "but I thought nothing of it and carried on." But as soon as he got back on the boat he realised he was in big trouble. "I suddenly came over very nauseous," he says. Within minutes he was in agonising pain, vomiting and struggling to breathe. "It felt like my organs were popping out."
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