by Bob Irwin
‘We have to give him the antivenom now or he’s not going to make it,’ I heard the doctor say, and Lyn hastily agreed. Without wasting another second, he administered a jab. And then, mere seconds later, the lights came back on and I could see again. My faculties rapidly returned. That’s how powerful that antivenom is.
It was a very different experience to a black snake bite I’d received a few years earlier in Melbourne, and it surprised me how dissimilar the effects were.
On that occasion I had been feeding the snakes in our Snake Room at our home in Essendon when a substantial black snake, well over two metres long, got hold of my thumb. He wouldn’t let go, chewing my thumb as he tried to digest it. After a painful few minutes, I finally managed to work my thumb free. But I quickly realised that, being the nice bloke he was, he had gifted me all of the venom at his disposal. I instantly threw up, and then spent days in hospital, ultimately getting gangrene at the bite site. I came very close to losing my thumb. The rotten flesh had to be cut out again and again over many months before it eventually came good. At that time, there wasn’t an antivenom for black snake bites, just a polyvalent, which was a broad-spectrum antivenom.
So in comparing the venom of the black snake and the brown snake, you’ve got to consider which is worse: thinking you’re going to die, or wishing you were dead. The pain of a black snake bite is so long-lasting because it contains necrotoxins that break down body tissue. At least with a brown snake the venom kills you reasonably fast. You might not be able to breathe and things like that, but it’ll be over quickly.
Thankfully I recovered completely from the western brown snake bite in no time. But the lesson had been driven home: I shouldn’t have considered for a second not getting checked out at the hospital, because it’s impossible to tell if a snakebite is dry simply by looking at it. You should always assume the worst. That day could have turned out very differently; I was just incredibly lucky.
But we would be returning to Nambour Hospital all too soon, when, in precisely the same circumstances, Lyn was bitten by another of our park’s scaly residents: a death adder. Death adders are also one of the top ten most venomous land snakes in Australia, needing just ten milligrams of venom to kill a grown human. As before, the snake struck Lyn’s finger instead of the mouse. And like me, Lyn was so sure that it was a dry bite that she refused to go to the hospital, giving me a dose of my own stubborn medicine. Well, we had been there and done that once before and learnt a very valuable lesson.
‘You are, and that’s the end of the discussion,’ I said quickly, hoping I’d won that round. I rang the hospital to notify them of the type of snake and that we were on our way, and then I wound a constricting bandage around her finger where the snake had bitten her, and up around the whole arm, to constrain the spread of the venom. I marked the bandage where the bite was.
The wound was awfully red and swollen and bleeding a lot from the puncture wounds. Death adders don’t grow to be all that long, rarely over a metre. But what they lack in body length, they make up for in fangs: the death adder possesses the longest fangs of any Australian snake.
The hospital staff had once again done everything correctly: they had the antivenom out of the fridge to warm to room temperature in preparation for our arrival, and they had the drips and equipment set up and ready to go. They got Lyn into the intensive care unit, and then the doctor rapidly ran through all of the normal questions, double-checking that the type of snake that had bitten her was in fact a death adder. I showed him the puncture marks on her finger. As they began her treatment I gathered my thoughts and checked my watch. It had been over an hour since Lyn had been bitten. As the doctor was about to give her a dose of life-saving antivenom, I suddenly shouted, ‘No, don’t give it to her!’
The startled doctor replied, ‘Sir, we need to give your wife the antivenom urgently.’ But if she had done that, she would have killed Lyn. It had in fact been a dry bite. In all the time that had passed since she had been bitten, Lyn had shown no symptoms whatsoever. Her pupils weren’t dilated, she wasn’t sweating, the area where she’d been bitten wasn’t tingling, she didn’t have any problems breathing, her eyesight was clear and her eyelids weren’t flickering. She was just sitting up in the bed chatting away, perfectly healthy. So I took her back home.
They hadn’t waited for signs of envenomation before preparing to administer the antivenom; they evidently hadn’t considered that a snake could bite without injecting any venom. If Lyn had been given antivenom without any venom in her system, it would have been as toxic as a death adder snakebite—but with nothing then available to counteract it. Back then there wasn’t as much known as there is today about snakebite effects and venom and antivenom.
These two encounters were pretty big wake-up calls for both of us. We needed to concentrate more on the job at hand and take more care. You can’t blame the animal for doing what comes quite naturally to them. If Lyn or I had come to harm from either one of those snakes, it would have been through no fault but our own. All we could do from now on was to take more care. And we certainly did, as I’m sure it wouldn’t have been a fourth time lucky.
***
Our collection of snakes wasn’t complete until I’d acquired the deadliest of them all, one native to our very own state of Queensland. In the early 1970s, a herpetologist friend of mine from Queensland Museum, Jeanette Covacevich, had been mailed the preserved head of a snake for identification. It had come from graziers Herb and Pearl, from a station west of Windorah in the Channel Country. She couldn’t readily identify it but suspected it might be part of the remains of a ‘fierce snake’, or inland taipan, that hadn’t been seen by scientists for a hundred years, since the snake was first described back in the 1870s. This resulted in a quest by the Queensland Museum to rediscover the fierce snake. To begin, Jeanette and fellow herpetologist Charlie Tanner travelled to Herb and Pearl’s property to catch a live specimen. In the weeks that followed, they located not one but thirteen of these elusive fierce snakes.
In the decade following their rediscovery, the fierce snake became one of the most notorious snakes in the world, after it was found to have the most toxic venom of any land snake. It was a close relative to the coastal taipan but with four times the toxicity of their venom. One bite would be enough to kill almost one hundred grown men. So I became a man on a mission. My plan? To catch one of these by hand.
Over the years I had got to know Jeanette and Charlie fairly well. I’d discuss all things reptiles with them, drawing on their combined wealth of knowledge that they were only too happy to share with me. Knowing that I could assist them with their findings, Jeanette put me in contact with Herb and Pearl on their property out of Windorah, which was of course one of my favourite places in all of Australia. I wasted no time in driving up there, taking Steve with me on the 2600-kilometre round-trip from Beerwah.
The property encompassed a large expanse of grazing land in central western Queensland with a graphic contrast between the volcanic rocky escarpments and the stark black soil plains. I liked Herb immediately. He drew us a map pointing out the best places to explore, such as a very remote inland lagoon only accessible by a concealed dirt track.
He knew his country like the back of his hand, regularly soaring above it in an old biplane that looked like it was made of cardboard. I didn’t go up there with him, but he took Steve up, who was beside himself with excitement. From the skies, Steve was able to take in the vastness of those endless plains.
Herb and Pearl had a feral pig called Piggy Wig. She was more guard dog than pig and she’d stalk you everywhere you went. Much as I liked Herb and Pearl, I didn’t get along with that pig at all, and Piggy Wig felt the same way: for one reason or another she took a particular dislike to me. One day while I was out helping Herb unload the mail truck, I jumped off the truck, my hands full of some fencing that had been delivered, and there was Piggy Wig, with all of her piggy authority, forcefully ramming one of her tusks into my leg.
In talking about the fierce snake with Herb and Pearl, it was clear that it hadn’t, of course, disappeared for all that time. The snakes had always been fairly conspicuous to local graziers, but generally its home areas in the semi-arid regions of central east Australia were so unbelievably remote, and sparsely inhabited, that before the interest of the Queensland Museum, nobody had ventured out in so long to do the necessary research. To the locals they were just another snake in the bush.
I wasted no time in setting out to find myself a fierce snake. But the time I could spend exploring was dictated by the weather. At Windorah you’ve got to be prepared to withstand extreme temperatures: in winter it can be fiercely cold, and in summer it can reach forty-six degrees Celsius in the shade. And it only becomes more intense the further west you go. In summer, little can survive above the surface in the heat, so you’d only have a chance of seeing the animals at the crack of dawn or as the sun was setting. And those cooler times were still a scorching thirty-two degrees Celsius.
To escape the heat, and because I had no air conditioning in my truck, I followed this schedule too. I’d hang around a water tank or billabong during the hottest parts of the day. The bush flies were relentless, the worst I’ve encountered anywhere. The only place to escape them was in the truck with the windows up, but that wasn’t an option because of the heat. So I’d just have to endure them, as they were all over me constantly. When the afternoon brought about a cooler change, I’d get back to searching.
Not a lot was known about the fierce snake’s habits, and so it was a bit like finding a needle in a haystack. Looking out at the dry black soil plains, I knew why this species had remained unseen for so long. Below the surface were deep cracks, sometimes wide enough to put my truck tyre through, that teemed with small mammals, mainly rats, for these snakes to feast on. And due to the extreme heat, fierce snakes only surface for about thirty minutes a day. They rarely need to expose themselves, because their prey also lives underground, keeping cool beneath the ground. We had arrived in spring, knowing that was the only time of year when these snakes sun themselves outside their underground labyrinth. But that was about as much as we had to go on.
Despite their fearsome name, giving them the stigma of being an aggressive snake, the fierce snake is actually one of the most placid snakes in the world. Driving cattle was the only time the stockmen would come across these highly elusive snakes. As their galloping horses and cattle caused vibrations in the ground, the snakes would rise to the surface in an aggressive display to show their agitation. In actual fact, these snakes are not aggressive whatsoever.
After a few days of searching, without success, I decided to venture out to the black soil plains earlier in the morning, and bingo: at precisely eight o’clock in the morning, I spotted a dark tan-coloured snake, with a round-snouted head that was noticeably dimmer than its body, making its way through some tussocks of grass along the edge of a crevice. The snake wasn’t large, less than one metre in length, but it was unquestionably the snake I had come to find. I couldn’t contain my excitement, but I didn’t move in for fear of driving him into the crevice. I decided to just lie on the ground, keeping as still as I could manage, and observe him moving in and out of the fracture in the earth.
But he was aware I was there, and flicked his forked tongue in my direction to smell me. I now questioned the wisdom of my move, given how little I knew about them. The fierce snake may be generally calm, but if agitated they don’t hold back. During attacks on prey, they’re known to strike multiple times with extreme accuracy, envenoming in almost every single case.
But this guy didn’t display any aggression, he just observed me and curiously approached me a couple of times. Carefully getting to my feet, I picked him up and lowered him into a catching bag. I felt as though I’d found a hidden treasure.
He wound up being the very first fierce snake in captivity. I doted on him, wasting no time in setting up his enclosure, complete with a background I painted depicting the spectacular black soil plains of his home. Because I’d spent time out in his environment, I was able to replicate his conditions in the wild to the best of my ability in his enclosure. I wanted everyone who came to admire him to find out something about where the fierce snake lives, what they prey on, and how important they are to those arid environments of Australia.
My hope was to eventually be able to breed the fierce snake in captivity, and I went on to catch many more of them, assisting the Queensland Museum in their research. But attempts at breeding never worked out, and it was hard to work out why but so little was known about them in those days.
Our fierce snake took pride of place in the Snake House at the reptile park, one of the most revered snakes in all of Australia. Thanks to our incredible new addition, our Queensland Reptile and Fauna Park housed the largest collection of Australian species of reptiles in the country. That snake lived to be over twenty years old, becoming not just the first but one of the oldest fierce snakes in captivity.
***
After spending so much time out in the semi-arid desert country west of Windorah searching for the fierce snake, I realised that that area was just a few kilometres from the home range of the perentie, the largest monitor lizard in Australia, which can measure up to two and a half metres long. They live on the escarpments neighbouring the black soil plains. I also discovered that very few zoos were working with them. But after receiving a permit to catch one, I spent years trying without any success. For the largest monitor lizard out there, they’re certainly hard to find. Like the fierce snake, they’re found only in arid areas of Australia, isolated from human habitation. It became Peter’s and my avowed mission to finally catch us a perentie.
Prior to our trip, I’d met a filmmaker named Vic, who’d filmed goanna eggs hatching at the park. He was filming a special on monitor lizards for Channel 7’s nature show The World Around Us, mainly in Australia, which is home to twenty of the world’s seventy-plus species of monitor lizards. Vic decided to join Peter and me in our upcoming trip on the trail of the perentie, in the hope that he could film the moment we first captured one. We sure hoped he’d be able to film a capture too.
Lyn was really good at letting me venture off to catch things and she’d keep the park running in my absence. And having new staff made things easier for me to be able to get away. I’m sure Lyn always snuck in a few changes she wanted while I was away, perhaps hoping I wouldn’t notice. Guaranteed, there’d be new flyers or souvenirs in the gift shop when I got home. And I had to concede that the ideas worked out in the end; she always had the foresight and plans to make the park bigger and better.
So Peter and I were out wandering in the rocky outcrops of western Queensland when at last we caught sight of a perentie. It was only a small one, about three feet long. ‘Down there, down there . . .’ Peter whispered, as he pointed his net at a cream-coloured lizard with tawny-brown designs edged in dark brown across its body. It was absolutely stunning, particularly in contrast to the dry, red earth beneath us.
This is our chance, I thought. And then watched, horrified, as Peter put down his net, picked up his camera and started snapping away.
‘What are you doing?’ I whispered, as emphatically as I could without scaring off the animal. I couldn’t believe it: after so long, we had come so close, and yet here was Peter capturing the moment instead of the perentie. He was a mere three metres away from it, the closest I had ever been to capturing one.
Finally, he carefully lowered the camera, picked up the net again and in one leap he had it. I nearly had a heart attack, I was that excited. Perenties are painfully shy and difficult to find. And they’re even more difficult to catch, as they can dig a burrow with their powerful front legs and claws and disappear deep below the surface within the blink of an eye. These burrows can be extensive networks that open onto several exits. Perenties have disappearing down to a fine art.
‘She’s a female,’ I said to Peter as I took a closer look at her. We were both gr
inning from ear to ear. But Vic had missed the whole thing. Our greatest catch of all time and there we were, alone with a perentie in a net, while the cameraman was off in the distance filming an eagle’s nest.
When Vic eventually returned and found us sitting there admiring this monitor, he was determined to get some footage regardless. ‘Can you release it and recapture it for the camera?’ he asked.
My heart was in my mouth at this request. It had taken so many years to get to this point. If we released her, chances were that she’d escape down a burrow and we’d never find her again. It had been our lucky day to find her in the first place. But we finally agreed, after taking her out to a red sandy plain. We hoped that somewhere like that we’d have a chance of outrunning her before she scampered off over the rocky escarpments.
When Vic was set up, he gave us the cue. As soon as we released her, she took off like a bolt of lightning, making for a tree and effortlessly clambering up the trunk to the highest, fragile branches. So Peter climbed after her, to the very top of the tree, and luckily managed to get hold of her again and bring her back down. We relived the excitement all over again, and couldn’t believe our luck that she hadn’t escaped us.
Peter took great pleasure in placing her into her very own enclosure when we got back to the park. I couldn’t wait for her to be on display. Many of our visitors would never have heard of these creatures before, despite their status as the largest monitor in the country.