The terror of Kurnell. 1911.

Since finding that first article about the snake man Frederick Fox, (i, ii) who was often referred to as the Snake King, I have been doing my best to find more information about him, specifically his age. I have had little luck with that but I have found a few other old articles about his snaky exploits.

Clarence and Richmond Examiner 7 Jan 1911 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article61601945

In the early 1900’s he would do an open air snake show at La Perouse in Sydney*, and this article reports a time in 1911 when he was challenged during a display to remove a notorious scaly resident from a nearby fishing spot.

On his second visit to the location he was successful in removing the Terror of Kurnell, a 7ft black snake, but only after falling headlong into “a morass infested with black snakes”. Yikes!

During the hunt for the beast he was obviously not just lying around in the sun waiting for it to show up; he also came home with 9 snake-filled bags containing 59 tiger snakes, 19 brown snakes, and 11 black snakes.

That fishing hole would definitely be a safer place for a while!

Apparently Mr. Fox didn’t sell the snakes he caught but kept them all at home (eeek!) and sold the venom.

I was very interested to find this tiny reference below to a film shown in 1911 called “Snake King Fox at Work”, apparently “the presentment of some of his captures” by Southern Cross pictures. Finding a clip of Fox capturing some snakes on youtube would have made my day!

The Sydney Morning Herald 9 Jan 1911 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article15216874

I have been doing my best to find this film but no luck…. 😦

If any of you future readers have seen it, or even heard whisper of it, please leave a comment, I would be extremely grateful! 😀

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*This snake show was taken over by the Cann family who operated the it until the last performance by a family member in 2010.

If you are scared of snakes, look away now….

I know that some people delight in sharing the terrors of Australian wildlife with the world, making them think that after setting foot on our shores death could come from anywhere, at any time, and without warning. This news article from the Herald-Sun is not going to help matters…..

Today the Mitchell St Childcare Centre in Darwin was temporarily closed thanks to an ‘inundation of snakes’. How many snakes make an inundation you ask?

The director of the childcare centre was alerted to the snakes presence when a baby one was found in a side room. They had the same snake problem last year so she had a fairly good idea of what was going on.

Some blokes from the council turned up to take care of things and decided that taking some wall panels off would be the best way to get to the root of the problem. Once the panel was removed 23 babies, and their 2.5 metre mother, were discovered and a wildlife ranger was called to take care of them. Inundation indeed!

The snakes turned out to be harmless Carpet Pythons, and many of the kids, and the parents who were arriving to pick them up, seem to have been quite amused by proceedings. Carpet Pythons are quite common in Darwin so I guess they were just glad it wasn’t their own wall the snake decided to make a home in.

If you are a little nervous of the wildlife in Australia don’t let this put you off visiting us though. For your entertainment here is a song to scare you encourage you to come; the Scared Weird Little Guys Come to Australia. 😉

More reasons to run. 1892.

Over the weekend the Man decided the Hill needed mowing, so I finally relented and allowed him to sacrifice my flowers. There is always a point near xmas when I fold, allowing him to get up there and do a bit of clearing. Generally the fold occurs when the weather gets hotter and the lizards get bigger.

Usually we have lots of small skinks in the garden, as most Aussie gardens do, they live in our flowerbeds and along our driveways, and come out every time the sun peeks out. When it gets hotter the bigger lizards like Blue Tongues start coming out into the garden more.

When I see them it reminds me that where there are good conditions for big lizards the snakes will not be far behind. Long grass and sunny days are a scary combination at times, so after the first few lizard spottings the Man has no trouble when he starts making forays up the Hill with mower. Especially as that is when the kids want to run around up there in shorts.

I have had to save a few Blue Tongues from being monstered by our little Jack in the last week, so I knew the time had come.

Singleton Argus 14 Dec 1892 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article82452155

When I found this article today it made me glad that the Man got the grass under control…

Imagine the speed with which these surveyors were running when they realized they were in the path of a fire on a mountain in Lorberry, Ohio, in 1892.

Now imagine their increased turn of speed once they saw the oncoming wave of fleeing snakes right behind them. I am not sure what would make me run faster, a looming bushfire or a sea of frightened snakes hot on my heels!

Of course our mower-shy neighbours might get a slithery visitor seeking sanctuary sometime soon as their unkempt grass grows right up to the house…. (insert evil laugh here).

A new house with a terrible surprise. 1894.

The last thing most people want on their honeymoon is uninvited guests in the middle of the night.

The newly married Mr. and Mrs. Schrader of Shoal Creek got the worst kinds of guests imaginable on their honeymoon in 1894, a room full of annoyed snakes. Perhaps the only thing less welcome would be a knife-wielding maniac.

I wonder who decided that cosy little spot by the bluff would be a good place for their marital home? Clearly it was a nice place to live, the only problem was that others had already earmarked it as home.

I have heard of large amounts of snakes hibernating together, I even heard of a person who bought a country property only to find the walls of the house were packed with sleepy reptiles… eeek! Not sure if different species of snakes usually choose to hibernate together as suggested in this story though.

Either way, the reptiles tolerance of other species obviously didn’t spread to creatures with legs, with the dog and the newly-wed humans in this story all succumbing to the venom of their unwanted visitors.

The rest of the humans showed just as little tolerance. The day after the funeral they blew the side off the bluff to reveal the den, then killed all the snakes inside.

The Mercury 10 Feb 1894 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13269199

Not snakes on a plane, this time it is snakes in cars.

Due to the popularity of the post of a few days ago about a snake appearing in the windscreen of a light plane mid-flight in northern Australia, here are two more that I found this week about snakes hitching a ride. I am aware that this might make you Aussies check your cars a little more thoroughly than usual for a while, and for that I am sorry 😉 .

Both of the snakes in these reports thought a car might get them to their destinations faster than slithering, although the one that got dropped out of the car door might not have been able to avoid getting squished. Especially if the driver was annoyed enough.

Woman picks up unwanted hitchhiker | Odd Spot | BigPond News

Woman bitten by snake while driving | Odd Spot | BigPond News

I think if either of these cars belonged to me they would have been insect-bombed to within an inch of their lives before I drove them again in the hopes any sneaky reptiles that had set up home decided to move away from the stench!

Snake-repelling Irish Soil. 1951.

It was St. Patrick’s Day on Saturday. People gathered early in Irish-themed pubs, drank watered-down green beer and overflowed with green-tinged merriment. It is a day when the whole world wants to be Irish.

Cairns Post 24 Sep 1951 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article42711268

I really doubt that the majority of the drinkers know, or even care, about the history of St Patrick or any of the stories around him.

I even heard an on-the-spot news presenter say that Saint Patrick would be proud of all these people gathered in the streets, exuberantly celebrating his life.

Really? His story starts when he was taken as a child from Scotland to Ireland as a slave, escaping after a dream from god. He grew into a pious man who returned to Ireland spending his time converting the pagans and living in poverty. Not sure where to find the part of the story where he became the patron saint of binge-drinking!

My favourite part of the St. Patrick story is his banishing of the snake population of Ireland, chasing them into the sea.

I thought today was a good day to share the story of Sir Henry Browne Hayes and his home in Vaucluse Sydney, bear with me, there is a St. Patrick connection!

In 1797 Sir Henry Browne Hayes was a 40-year-old Irish widower. He fell in love with a rich Quaker heiress named Miss Mary Pike.

He decided to kidnap her and force her into marriage, believing that the romance of his actions would change her mind.

Unsurprisingly she didn’t fall for his charms, having a warrant issued for his arrest after she was rescued by relatives.

Hayes was quite an influential man and a captain in the South Cork Milita. His confidence in his position in society is probably what led him to give himself up to the authorities a few years later, no doubt expecting leniency in his sentencing. Unfortunately for him he was sentenced to death, later commuted to transportation for life, arriving in Australia in 1802. (Lesson- Don’t mess with an Irish bankers daughter.)

Sir Henry Browne Hayes hardly lived the harsh life of a convict, he was wealthy and openly disrespectful of authority. Even before he arrived in Australia he was losing friends in high places with his behaviour, annoying the ship’s surgeon enough to earn him six months imprisonment upon his arrival.

In 1803 he bought a run-down property near Sydney and named it Vaucluse (now one of the most exclusive areas of Sydney). He built a cottage and cleared 50 acres of land, planting thousands of fruit trees. Unfortunately for snake hating Sir Henry, he found Vaucluse to be snake infested. In order to remedy this he had 500 barrels of soil sent over from Ireland.

The following St. Patrick’s Day he had a trench dug all around the house, and filled it with the supposedly snake-repelling soil, expecting that the influence of St. Patrick would follow. Surprisingly this magic moat is rumoured to have done the trick!

Unfortunately, here is nothing left of the original plantings, and the cottage built by Sir Henry has been absorbed into the Gothic mansion built by the later, and more famous owner, the explorer William Charles Wentworth.

Vaucluse House is now open to the public and owned by NSW Historic Houses Trust.