The driver was lucky a snake catcher was close by. Photo / Facebook, Gladstone Region Snake Catchers
The driver was lucky a snake catcher was close by. Photo / Facebook, Gladstone Region Snake Catchers
Horrifying pictures reveal the moment a Queensland driver realised they had escaped a potentially fatal ending with a hidden passenger.
David Voss from Gladstone Region Snake Catchers posted video of a deadly eastern brown snake inside a car on Facebook this week, saying it was a "one in a million" find.
Voss believes the deadly eastern brown snake had been in his customer's car for "hours", but the driver didn't notice until stopping in a car park and calling a snake catcher ... who happened to be just metres away.
The driver was lucky a snake catcher was close by. Photo / Facebook, Gladstone Region Snake Catchers
"This is unreal," Voss said, explaining he was getting dinner when his phone rang regarding the snake.
"The car was in the car park of the same shopping complex, only 50m away from me.
"To my surprise it was a decent size eastern brown. It would appear that the snake has travelled from Rockhampton to Gladstone with the vehicle's owner and most likely inside the car's cabin."
That's a distance of about 100km.
An eastern brown snake makes its way on to the driver's seat. Photo / Gladstone Region Snake Catchers, Facebook
Voss said he found scale damage on the snake's tail and guessed it had initially been in the engine bay.
"I did find one spot on the car's chassis that could have been the snake's entry point into the cabin," he said.
"I'm not a fan of catching eastern browns at night-time, and particularly from inside a car, but everything went well.
"The second deadliest snake on the planet travelling unnoticed in a car with you for a couple of hours!!"
The incident on Monday night follows warnings of an increase of venomous snakes in NSW.
Australian Snake Catchers' Sean Cade, who works in Sydney and the Blue Mountains, told news.com.au last week call-outs were already ramping up, averaging eight to 10 a day.
"The thing out of the ordinary compared to the last few years is the size of the snakes we're getting … bigger, healthier, fatter snakes," he said.
The eastern brown snake causes the highest number of fatalities of any snake in Australia.
St John Ambulance training manager and former paramedic Lara Bisley said the most important thing if bitten by a snake bite is to immediately call triple-0.
"Ultimately you want to stop the venom from travelling, which means as you're waiting for the ambulance you should keep the patient still, lay them flat and wrap a bandage over the site of the bite," Bisley said.
"Follow this with a pressure bandage – starting from the fingers or toes and wrapping upwards as far as you can go."
