Dam to look for snakes, and together with his lovely
lady, Jas, we set off just on dusk. Fogg Dam is of
course where Professor Rick Shine did much of his
study on Water Pythons (Liasis fuscus) and is widely
known amongst herpers for its population of this
species. Both of us used headlights as we drove
along, and we saw many water birds taking flight in
the beam of our lights, including one Jabiru. Tom
spotted the first Water Python, which slid into the
water as he touched its tail, but the second one we
were able to pick up and admire. We found a large
turtle crossing in front of us and also saw the eye-
shine of a crocodile some thirty metres away from
land. So well known by herpers is this location that
we passed other cars coming in the opposite direc-
tion with lights shining out of the windows. When I
asked Tom how often this occurred he said most
times he was there.
Heading to Scotts Creek, where Tom said we would
see File Snakes (Acrochordus arafurae), we found
two more DOR (dead-on-road) Water Pythons and a
DOR Keelback (Tropidonophis mairii) which was
about the largest either of us had seen. It was a
female with squashed eggs forced from the splits in
her body as a result of being run over by a vehicle.
We also saw a DOR banded form of the Brown Tree
Snake (Boiga irregularis). The third DOR Water
Python we found was extremely fat, with a head that
was simply too small for the size of its body. Tom
commented that the rats that these snakes largely
feed on had been in almost plague proportions and
that this one had obviously taken full advantage of
that fact.
We arrived at the causeway at Scotts Creek to see
an Aboriginal sitting gazing into the water and we
walked over to have a chat. In the beam of our lights
the water was a seething mass of literally millions of
small fish, and sure enough the File Snakes were
having a feast! The Aboriginal chap and his mates
had already caught some large File Snakes, which of
course are a regular part of their diet. There were
many small File Snakes, but the men were keen to
get big specimens. One little girl amused us when
one of the men slipped and dropped a large snake.
“You bloody drop it,”’ she said, laughing, and
scooped it up again with a huge smile, cramming it
into the bag with the others.
We had a pleasant conversation with the group of
aboriginals, one of whom was a senior ranger from
Kakadu. Tom explained that, with the end of the wet,
the water from the floodplains pours into this area
and he has seen times when he could scoop up
armfuls of File Snakes, so what we were witnessing
was not unusual.
The next morning I was on a Greyhound bus bound
for Victoria River Downs station six and a half hours
away where Nick was to meet me and take me on to
Left: Part of Neville’s brief was to relocate snakes
away from the farm.
Above: Neville gets reacquainted with his old mate
Bari at Crocodylus Park.
Below: Tom Parkin with a Water Python at Fogg
Dam. The lights in the background are other
herpers.
All images courtesy Neville Burns.