Snake attacks

Snakes normally only bite out of self defence, most people that get bitten were either trying to catch or kill the snake or were annoying it or happen to stumble on it.
Deaths by snake bite are rare in Australia, as with the right first aid there is justabout always enought time to get to medical help and the availability of anti venines save many lives.
By contrast in New Guinea, just north of Australia, Papuans have the highest snake bite fatality rate in the world with an estimated 200-plus deaths a year, mainly by taipans. This was announced by James Cook University researcher David Williams who said that many villagers, especially children, are dying because they're too poor to afford Australian manufactured antivenene.

Alice Springs

Glenn "Shorty" Butler from Alice Springs was one of the three unlucky people that die by snake bite a year.
In October 2006 he went to the dunny of his Alice Springs home and a snake, probably a western brown, was in there and Shorty stepped on his neck so the snake bit him. He was taken to hospiral where he spent some time on life support before passing away.

Byron Bay

One night police in the northern New South Wales town of Byron Bay received a call that a man with a python wrapped around his body was harrassing people in the town centre. They went to investigate and got there just in time. They found the man unconscious on the ground with the python wrapped around his chest, he must have underestimated the physical power of his pet.
(Pythons have no poisonous bite but they kill their prey by constricting.)

Cape Tribulation

Paul and Lawrence Mason, one unknown and Jim Manning holding a python at Cape Tribulation.
Photo courtesy of Mason's Tours

One night a couple of girls come running in to the bar at PK's Jungle Village and tell the security guard that there is an old man with a knife running around outside. Security guard goes to investigate and it turned out to be a builder who was doing some renovations on the site. He always had a pet bird sitting on his shoulder but a python had just grabbed and killed his beloved pet so he was taking revenge by killing the snake!

Nightcliff, Darwin, Northern Territory

Three blokes were having a few drinks watching one of the many spectacular sunsets in Darwin when one of them found a snake. Being under the influence of alcohol and not real smart, he picked it up to have a play with it. The snake didn't enjoy this so it bit him. One of his mates said; you don't know how to handle snakes and took the snake of him, propmpting the snake to bite the second bloke too! By now the third bloke said both his mates were idiots and didn't know how to handle snakes and took the snake off them and guess what? Yep, he got bitten too! Not wanting to admit their stupidity they let the snake go and continued drinking but after a while they started passing out one after the other. By the time they were finally taken to hospital the venom had gone that far through their bodies that a huge amount of anti venine was needed, more than there was in Darwin so it had to be flown in from Katherine and Kakadu, making this a very expensive exercise indeed!

Near Melbourne, January 2004

Les Williams, 46, A Victorian snake handler, thought he had suffered an asthma attack when he experienced breathing problems and called for an ambulance.
But the ambulance officer discovered fang marks on one of his toes while examining him and concluded he had been bitten by one of the 25 snakes the man keeps on his property and it probably was a king brown snake
because the fang marks were significantly wide apart and would have had to
have come from a large snake. It is not uncommon for people to fail to immediately realise they have been bitten by a snake, particularly in the wild as it can happen very quickly and the teeth of a snake are very small and sharp
and don't cause much pain when they bite. The king brown is Australia's largest venomous snake and grows up to 3m in length. It is not native to Victoria and is more commonly found in tropical climates.

Somewhere in Australia

One of our readers sent us this pic of someone's pet cat having an encounter with a python.

Sydney, October 2006

A 50 year old tourist at Wiseman's Ferry was not all that wise but did get ferried (to hospital).
when he thought he saw a lizard in the dark he decided to pick it up, unfortunately it was not a lizard but a death adder and it bit him five times. To add to the mayhem he also had a heart attack while waiting to be airlifted to hospital by helicopter, but was revived by ambulance officers, and also had to be given multiple doses of antivenom.

Use of this website constitutes acceptance of the User Agreement for this website
Contact us | Advertise on this site | Link to this site |Add your photos or stories to this site | Webmasters | Affiliates