Great Australian Urban Myths: The Cane Toad High

Revised Edition.

We like to think that we live in an age of reason and rationality, that uncertainty and the unknown have largely been eliminated by technology and science. But it seems that we have nagging doubts. Continually, we tell each other odd tales about baby-napping birds and hairy-armed women in the shopping mall. We hear about phantom hitchhikers and headless bikies on the highways. People get high from licking the skin of cane toads, garden gnomes take international holidays, and dunnies explode.

This collection of Australian urban myths is a revised edition of Graham Seal's earlier book, 'Great Australian Urban Myths: Granny On The Roofrack And Other Tales Of Modern Horror'. There are updates on old favourites, like the stolen kidneys and the "Blue Star" acid scare, as well as many new legends scooped from the ever-expanding pool - guaranteed to fascinate readers with their gruesomeness and their absurdity. Also included is an "urban-legend-busting kit", which tells you how to avoid the increasingly common experience of being "myth-taken".

Powered by the World Wide Web, e-mail, the media and word of mouth, these false but believable tales are becoming bigger and more bizarre, with the "yuk factor" even higher than it was before. Often they are strangely familiar: the peanut butter surprise; the cooked cat; an earwig on the brain; the exploding dunny; the millennium bug; granny on the roofrack; the great kidney panic of '98; travel bugs; the cane toad high; the killer in the back seat; shanghaied to Canberra; electronic worms; bunyips, yowies and yaramas.

So, no matter what we call them, or how we analyse these anecdotes of our age, the redbacks are still multiplying in the dreadlocks, hatchets are still being found in the back seat of the family car, and poor old Granny is still up on that roofrack - out there, somewhere.