Left: Granite Leaf-
tailed Gecko
(Saltuarius wyberba).
Image supplied by
Rom Whitaker and
Janaki Lenin.
Right: Pale-headed
Snake (Hoplocephalus
bitorquatus). Image by
Scott Eipper.
size. Is this how these elapids bask? Without dis-
turbing them, we got some pictures and watched as
they crawled next to each other, tongued a greeting
and then disappeared together in the thick bush.
Janaki and I were impressed by the beautiful sheen
of their scales.
Elliott also found a baby Tiger Snake resting under
a piece of tin. We took
a few pictures of the
tiny elapid, and
Sapiano commented,
“We don’t know what
it’s capable of yet, so
we’re careful with it.”
This should be a more
common refrain in Australia, where roughly 100 of
the 140 species of native snakes are venomous. If
you’re snake hunting in America and India, you see
a fast-moving, long, slender snake, and you dive
and grab it. It's a colubrid. In India it’s a ratsnake or
bronzeback tree snake, and in America, it’s a
Coachwhip or Black Racer. In Australia, you don't
dive on it kids -it's always an elapid! Which makes
us wonder, what happened to colubrids in
Australia? There's so few.
We headed back to Melbourne via a detour, as
Elliott wanted to show us more of the bush. His
sharp eyes spotted a Jacky Dragon on a stump,
even as we were cruising, and we stopped for a
quick photo opportunity. We had seen two of our
main target species and more - we were chuffed!
Both Janaki and I have a particular fondness for
monitor lizards and it was a pleasure to meet
Elliott’s Lace Monitors. He's sure his goannas know
their names, another tantalizing indication of just
how smart these lizards are - the smartest of all
reptiles perhaps? Smarter than crocs maybe?
Next on the calendar was a day at the Melbourne
Zoo, where Damien Goodall of the Reptile House
welcomed us behind the scenes. Here we met good
old pal Chris Banks and got to see their wonderful
collection of critically-
endangered Philippine
Crocodiles. We don’t
have this species back
at the Madras Croc
Bank and I had never
seen them before.
The really big social
event in Melbourne was the VHS Expo. Janaki and I
have been to reptile expos in different parts of the
world and the VHS show was really well organized
and patronized. While there was some serious buy-
ing and selling of beautiful, captive-bred reptiles,
this was a time and place for like-minded people to
get together and talk; bragging about the reptiles
they’ve seen in the wild and what they are breeding
in captivity, and of course, gossiping about some of
the herp weirdos, both human and reptilian, whom
we all know. It was a great experience for kids too,
with plenty of interesting herps to see, along with
the chance to hold a snake, touch a crocodile and
attend some very lively talks and demonstrations.
The next leg of our Aussie tour started in Brisbane,
where we met up with Steve Castell and his partner
Mahalia Logan. No sooner had we set our bags on
the floor of their living room than we were off on
another adventure - a 200km drive out across the
Great Dividing Range to Girraween National Park