A day in the life of a rookie reptile handler
STEPHEN McEWAN'S first assignment with the 4.5-metre Queensland scrub python seemed straightforward enough: give it a wash down to help loosen its skin, due to be shed before winter. But within a few seconds of McEwan entering the pool at the Australian Reptile Park, at Gosford, the snake thought of a better idea.
It was Sunday, April 11, 1976, and there were about 100 visitors in the park, inc
More..luding the Herald photographer Russell McPhedran, who was on an assignment, when McEwan, 15, took the snake behind the head and began washing it down.
"It suddenly started to coil itself around the boy's face and neck," McPhedran said later. "At first everyone thought it was normal. Then it became obvious the boy was in real danger." People screamed and the park's founder, Eric Worrell, leapt into the pool.
"At this point the python got a firm hold," McPhedran said. "The boy's face was going red and the snake suddenly forced him right under the water."
The snake continued to push the boy under water and another park worker jumped into the pool, joining a 10-minute wrestling match.
When McEwan was freed he still had his hold behind the snake's head. He said later that he had been terrified, "but it's interesting work, and I think I'll continue".
Worrell was Australia's reptile danger man - before Steve Irwin, Alby Mangels, the Leyland brothers and Harry Butler emerged - and his tourist park grew out of a front-yard venture he established on the Central Coast in 1948. "Ploddy", the giant dinosaur statue placed in front of the Gosford site in 1963 - later moved to Somersby - is claimed to be the first of the "Big" tourist icons that dot Australia.
In the 1950s he became the exclusive supplier of poison from Australia's deadliest snakes to the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories for the development of antivenom doses. He later supplied funnel-web spider venom, used by Dr Struan Sutherland and his team for research which produced a life-saving antivenom. Worrell, bitten countless times by snakes and spiders, died of natural causes in 1987.
One of McPhedran's photographs won him the Walkley Award for best news picture of 1976. Less..
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