By Callum Ludwig
As the weather warms up and snakes start to appear in the Upper Yarra, it’s important to have a good understanding of how to avoid any unwanted encounters with the slithery reptiles.
BlackSnake Productions, based in East Warburton, is helping locals improve their snake safety knowledge ahead of this summer with a free informative session later this month.
Founder of Blacksnake Productions Michael Alexander said they wanted to give something back to the locals.
“Especially because the Upper Yarra Ranges is a bit of a low socioeconomic area, people can’t afford to often get a state catcher out and they don’t always have the ability to, especially with a lot of elderly people in the area, to clean up a property,” he said.
“I did a snake job the other day where the lady’s garden was overgrown and she was quite old and just couldn’t do it so it’s creating a habitat for snakes,”
“We think this is the best way to try and help people is to do safety courses, similar to what we do in workplaces around the place.”
The session will be two hours long on Tuesday 26 November from 5pm at the ADRA Redwood Community Care Centre.
Mr Alexander said the snakes most common in the Upper Yarra are tiger snakes and copperheads.
“Once you get between Millgrove and Wesburn, up on the hill a little east of the Valley you get alpine copperheads but in the lower lands and flood plains around Don Valley, Yarra Junction, Launching Place and right through the rest of the valley, you get the lowland copperheads,” he said.
“Tiger snakes are probably the most widespread and common throughout the whole region, and they’re also the fourth most venomous snake in the world, they’ve got the longest fangs for any Victorian snake and the largest venom yield so that makes them a very dangerous snake.”
In other areas of the Outer East, brown snakes can be found out towards Christmas Hills and Wonga Park while red-belled black snakes can be found north of the train line through Healesville and Yarra Glen, in townships like Dixon’s Creek.
Mr Alexander said all snakes will try to keep away from people.
“The problem is when people accidentally stand on them, they put their hand on them when they’re going to get eggs out of the chook pen, orwhen gardening, or where the snake is alongside the doorstep and they step out and accidentally stand on it,” he said.
“We also have a big problem with people picking them up, touching them, relocating themselves or trying to kill them, which is actually the number one cause of a snake bite in Australia,”
“Snakes are also a protected species that you are not allowed to kill at all, it’s equivalent to seeing a platypus or a koala and smacking it with a shovel because you don’t like it, it’s a criminal offence.”
Anyone interested in attending the session can sign up by filling out the following form: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSftktE0HTCrllAE3sUojck1ynRV2SP9DcjUv6t8OJrqg7NwFw/viewform.
Mr Alexander said the session will cover a number of important things to know about snakes to keep residents and the animals safe.
“We talk about what kind of footwear is ideal, personal protective equipment such as gators and what gloves you should be wearing in the garden, ideally something with length protection and not just around your wrist,” he said.
“We’ll be going over first aid in detail and getting everyone to put a bandage on themselves, and we’ll also be going into how venom works, the way snakes inject it and how it affects the body, so symptoms and then how anti-venom works and how hospitals treat snakebites,”
“We’ll actually be looking at people that have passed away through snake bites, why they got bitten and why they died, and how we can make sure that doesn’t happen to people in the room by applying better practices, not touching them, and looking at communication, first aid and making sure that everyone’s prepared to this summer.”
