Snake handler courses in the NT

Snake handling course in the Northern Territory of Australia

I’ve just been to the Northern Territory to conduct another “hands-on” reptile handling course.

Going to Darwin for a few days always makes for a very different week at work, even for the snake man.

So this week was slightly different to my usual hum-drum.

Normally, it’s the busy weekend of gigs including snake shows, reptile displays at major  Melbourne events, kids birthday parties and the like, giving way to a Monday at a school incursion in Melbourne, or perhaps a day in the office with a mass of reptiles waiting to be fed and cleaned, and the phones ringing non-stop.

This week was a bit different.

After a particularly busy weekend of events and the like, all our staff and I went out to a well-earned break at a Thai Restaurant, ending near midnight, with everyone going home to be after that.

Except for me of course.

Paying the bill nearly sent me broke and then, back home I had to unload three lots of reptiles and frogs, about 90 in total, and then clean all the cages in the place.

Got snakes, means you will get lots of crap to clean out of cages!

After that I had to feed some baby Tiger Snakes, Death Adders, Crocodiles and Rough-scaled pythons.

Then I loaded boxes of snakes into a carry case and off I went to the airport.

It was still dark as I arrived at the airport to get the Melbourne to Darwin flight and then by brekkie time I was in Canberra.

After a plane swap I was on my way to Darwin.

By early afternoon I was on the road out of Darwin to a regional school to teach the people there about snakes.

It was a bit surreal, I had brought a load of NT snakes to the NT, to teach the locals about snakes and snake handling.

The Death Adders I had with me were four year olds who had bred a year earlier.  They had been brother and sister.  Their parents were held by Andrew Lowry of Melbourne.  He’d got them as babies from Rob Valentic, who in turn had bred the parents in the mid 1990’s.  He had caught their parents as adults from Hayes Creek in the NT, just a short distance from where I was to do my snake handling course.

Well, at least I didn’t have to cruise roads at night to catch snakes!

There was something else surreal about the trip.

It was the first time ever, vet certified surgically devenomized snakes had ever entered the Northern Territory.

The course was to teach the locals how to catch and relocate unwanted snakes without injuring either the snakes or the people.

For that purpose the teachers at this institution had searched Australia for Australia’s best reptile teachers and scored with Snakebusters, the only teachers with more than 30 years verifiable expertise and the only hands on reptiles course teachers.

Another outfit from Melbourne had offered to come up and teach these people, but when the NT people realised they’d been lied to about the alleged expertise of this snake handler, they pulled the pin on them.

Five years of snake handling and the purchase of a $70 business name does not make you a reptile expert … even if you erect a website saying the same.

To cut a long story short, the course we did in the NT was a success.

Half a dozen people got to learn how to handle and catch the world’s deadliest snakes and in complete safety.

They learnt snakebite avoidance, treatment, handling, keeping, identification, the best reptile handling methods and more.

The snakes were also unharmed and go back to Melbourne to educate others about snakes and de-demonize them, as well to continue a hectic regime of kids reptile parties in Melbourne, snake shows, reptile displays and more.

When we teach people about snakes in our snake handling courses we don’t come out with the rubbish that these snakes are mean or nasty.  Instead, we say it as it is.  That is, snakes really aren’t interested in people and they don’t spend every waking our wanting to kill us.

Anyway, my sleeping room was christened on the first night, when two Death Adders had a NT honeymoon and mated all night.  Yes this was the brother and sister Death Adder!

Unfortunately I no time to go out and about catching critters, even though we had permission from the NT NPWS.

Besides a few roadkills, all I saw was a bucket load of Cane Toads, some Green Tree Frogs, some frogs I provisionally identified as “Limnodynastes tasmaniensis” which would be feral to the area (they are a southern Australian native) and some lizards.

The lizards I saw were some skinks, of a species once identified as “Carlia vivax”, and three species of gecko, including two “house” type geckos (probably “Gehyra” species) and Binoes Geckos.

While in the NT I took some wicked pics of the critters I saw, excluding a dragon lizard I’d seen during the day in the grounds, but it’d run up a tree before I could get close.

Before I knew it I was back at Darwin airport waiting for the plane back to Melbourne.  My first phone call when I got back into mobile phone reception was a telemarketer in India trying to sell me something.

Then it was a satisfied customer in Melbourne who we’d done a reptile show for the previous weekend.

Third call was a shopping mall wanting Australia’s only hands on reptile shows, yes Snakebusters!  Then I had all the missed-call messages.

More bookings for Australia’s only hands-on snake handling courses including more people wanting us from interstate.

Recently we’ve trained a number of people from outside Australia for snake catching courses and non-Australian inquiries remain common.

Among our marketing advantages are that only Snakebusters, Australia’s best reptiles, is owned by Australia’s Snake Man, namely myself and we are the only people who always put the welfare of the reptiles first.

One of our recent customers mentioned that they wanted us to teach them how to catch snakes in Melbourne, because we were the only snake handing courses teachers in Melbourne who do not advocate the use of “Killer tongs” to handle snakes.  This customer said “I want to learn how to be a snake handler and NOT a snake killer!”

As for these people we saw at the NT, well, they already want us back to teach people we missed in the first course, so I may be back in Darwin for another snake handling course, sooner than I think!