Despite this, fear of our fauna and marine life peaked very early in the year, after two men were mauled in the space of two February days at two favourite aquatic haunts - Sydney Harbour and Bondi Beach. Navy diver Paul de Gelder was first, losing his hand and right leg after being attacked by a bull shark during an underwater exercise. Days later, a great white shark locking its jaws around the left arm of Glenn Orgias while he was surfing at Bondi at dusk. The attacks, and intense media coverage, prompted the NSW Government to launch its "shark action plan". But despite the hysteria, there were no shark-related fatalities in 2009, according to a Taronga Zoo spokesman. The zoo maintains the Australian Shark Attack File. There were a number of other "encounters", including bites and grazes.

Life was more perilous where crocodiles roamed. The Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife Service recorded two croc fatalities in the territory this year. Eleven-year-old Briony Goodsell was swimming with other children at Black Jungle Swamp, southeast of Darwin, in March when she was taken by a saltwater crocodile. A month later, 20-year-old Keith Parry was killed by a four-metre crocodile while swimming in the Daly River. "I only saw its big head and then heard a splash," his sister was reported as saying. Less seriously, reptile handler Tracey Sandstrom was attacked by her two-metre saltwater crocodile, Snappy, during a Christmas party earlier this month in Victoria.

The irukandji jellyfish - the size of a peanut with a sting that can kill - reared its tiny ugly head this month, but took no lives in 2009. An encounter with the jellyfish is known to cause victims to double up in agony, with the pain starting in their lower back and stomach and spreading to their legs, before inducing uncontrollable shivers and vomiting. Earlier this month, a 29-year-old man ended up in intensive care in a Queensland hospital after reportedly diving into the deadly jellyfish's tentacles. He was wearing a full-body stinger suit when he plunged head-first into its stingers. Two days ago, the winner of Tourism Queensland's "Best Job in the World" was stung. Ben Southall wrote on his blog on Tuesday that he had a minor brush with the irukandji while jet skiing in the Whitsundays, in north Queensland.

"I was feeling pretty hot and sweaty, had a headache and felt pretty sick too with pain in my lower back and a tightness in the chest and a really high blood pressure." Despite their reputation, funnel-web bites have caused no fatalities since the availability of anti-venom in the 1980s, said Mary Rayner, general manager of the Australian Reptile Park. The park milks venom from the spiders and delivers it to CSL Limited, which creates the anti-venom. But two serious funnel-web bites this year stood out in her memory, both early on this year, because they showed spiders did not discriminate based on age. An 84-year-old Central Coast woman became one of the oldest spider victims after she was bitten on the toe, Ms Rayner said.

Days later, a three year old boy was bitten at his Newcastle home. Both were treated with anti-venom and survived. "The little three-year-old boy came in [to the reptile park] soon after to have a look at all the spiders," she said. Snake bites - commonly carried out by tiger and eastern brown snakes - killed about half a dozen people last summer, some of which were in the early part of 2009, Ms Rayner said. There were also a number of serious but non-fatal bites, in both rural and metropolitan areas.

A three-year-old boy was bitten by a 2.5-metre brown snake while playing in a river north-west of Sydney in January, although he survived. Days earlier, a young boy was bitten at St Marys after trying to pick up a black snake which he thought was a stick. Also in January, an experienced reptile handler at Australia Zoo was bitten by a king brown snake, while in June a snake bit a cleaner at the Myer department store in Lonsdale Street, Melbourne. After weeks of dry and hot conditions, followed by rain, the numbers of snakes and spiders now out and about and looking to mate was on the rise, Ms Rayner said. In 2009, animals also brought on death through the spread of disease.

Almost 200 Australians died as a result swine flu, a strain of influenza that gripped the world with fear this year. Lesser known, the mosquito-borne virus Murray Valley encephalitis killed a Northern Territory farmer - 58-year-old Theofilis Maglis - in March. The hendra virus, a rare virus spread from bats to horses and then to humans, also killed Rockhampton vet Alister Rodgers this year. Dr Rodgers was the second vet and fourth Queenslander to die from the virus, after veterinarian Dr Ben Cunneen, 33, passed away following an outbreak of Hendra in Brisbane in August last year.