which it took three blows with a piece of paling before it
quitted its hold. A widow and four young children are left
behind for whom the dying man expressed great
concern.’ Sometimes people had horrendous accidents
trying to kill snakes. A police officer at Westbury was
attempting to kill a snake with the butt of his gun when it
discharged; ‘he received the contents of the piece in his
throat and was killed’. 51 In 1933 a shocking incident took
place on Swan Island off Tasmania's north-east coast, 52,53
Oscar Lynch was walking through a rough paddock near
Burnie and was alarmed to see a large snake tugging on
his trousers, ‘for the first time in 15 years he is pleased
that he has a wooden leg’. 55 While trawling through
newspaper records, the author found a number of
incidents in which female 19 th century clothing resulted
in some lucky escapes when snakes struck at and got
hooked up on children's dresses, allowing the victims to
avoid being bitten. 56, 57
F emale 19 th century clothing resulted in some lucky
escapes when snakes struck at and got hooked up on
children's dresses.
when 15-year-old Roy Patterson (the son of the light-
house keeper) went on a snake-shooting expedition with
a friend. ‘Just as the other boy fired at a snake, Patterson
jumped up from behind a bush and received the full
charge in the face and chest. He died before he could be
carried to the lighthouse.’ Some bites took place under
the most bizarre circumstances, such as the woman who
was bitten twice while preparing a freshly-killed chicken
for the table. While attempting to gut the bird, Mrs James
Donnelly of Franklin felt a sharp prick on two occasions
but thought it was due to a shard of bone. On drawing out
the entrails, a live snake nine inches in length was
discovered in the bird's stomach, having evidently been
swallowed shortly before the chicken was dispatched.
After slashing the bite with a razor blade and applying a
string tourniquet, Mrs Donnelly recovered without ill
effect. 54 Luck was sometimes a factor, such as when
For much of its history Tasmania was predominantly a
rural society and, until the end of WW2, work in fields
and the bush entailed far more manual labour than it does
today. Snakes were plentiful and accidental human
contact with them common. Early newspapers are full of
accounts of tragedies and near misses while people were
involved in their day-to-day work or household chores.
Harvesting crops in particular exposed workers to
frequent encounters with snakes attracted to piles of cut
crop in paddocks where high densities of mice existed. 63
Frontier homes and shepherds’ quarters were often - by
today’s standards - roughly-built but sturdy wooden
structures that were hardly snake-proof. There are many
reports of people being bitten in their homes - often at
night in their beds! One particularly graphic example
took place at Bothwell in 1920 64 when a shepherd named
George Heazlewood ‘whilst lying in bed on Tuesday