Snakes

Not a problem, but if you see one, don't interfere with it. You'll be fine.

Best of luck.

Time of year could play a big part.

More likely to see snakes on the road in winter , getting warm , then in Summer.

There was a big mother on the Sandy Blight Junction Track at Easter. I am sure more snakes see us than we them. Which is good. I'd hate wake up with a 2 m tiger in the swag!
I see more snakes around our home than I ever do while travelling.

In 1987 i rode around australia on a motorbike going bitumen and dirt, i went north in winter and went south in summer. Camped out 90% of the time, often just hooked off the road until out of sight.

I never saw one live snake.

But hey, snakes are hard to see, when i was growing up our dog always found them. So i'm sure they were sliverying everywhere around me many times. But they don't like to attack big things (cept maybe taipans and king browns when they get provoked)

No worries about snakes here mate, as long as you leave them alone they'll leave you alone, as for running them over can't be helped sometimes i'd be more worried about hitting a Kangaroo, wombat or Emu. To answer your question yes they are common but it's a big country, seeing them is another thing. This is just a bit of trivia, more people die from bee stings than from snake bit.

Baz.

Enjoying a beer

Marbro
Lived and worked in the bush most of my life. See snakes anout 1 or 2 time a year but this is when walking.
Unless you step on them they are happy to move away from you if they can, which is OK by me.
Vince

Marbro,
both you sources are probably correct. It will have a lot to do with he weather and the seasons.
They are very common,even in the outer suburbs of the warmer cities at the beginning of summer.
They like to crawl onto warm rocks or roads and are at their fastest but unfortuntely are not fast enough to get out of the way of a speeding vehicle.
Running snakes over intentionally is seen as sport to some in this country but it is illegal and detrimental to the balance of wildlife.

I have lived and grown u p in the country as a kid i dedicated most of my spare time pusuing lizards under rocks iron etc I found very few nakes which looking back is bizare. snakes are fairly common but are often not seen as they take off quickly I never run them over but usualy pull over for a look. besides a tiger snake I came accross all snakes I have encountered have taken off quickly ( tigers are inquisitive and kept coming closer to me as I was taking its photo to see what i was doing) although i will go to efforts to miss snakes on the road i wouldnt begrudge a tour operator with a vehicle full of people for keeping their safety foremost

I saw a lot of snakes mostly at night when working East of Fitzroy on the road construction. Mostly attracted to the lights on my truck when I was working on the road machinery, or after the thousands of frogs at the dams we constructed for the water carts.
Never a problem though and I avoided running them over whenever possible.
One of the wogs hated them (he hated everyone and everything!) and would kill any he saw even if they were in a remote location away from camp.
Leave them alone and you'll normally never have any probs. with them.

i had an experience on my drivway at home while under the car changeing the oil, brown snake approaching me what was i to do??? hit it with the breaker bar untill dead!!! later found out that i was liable for a fine due to them being protected species or something... are humans protected species???? if the snake killed me would it pay a fine for killing me??

Dont you just hate that shiver that goes down your spine when you see a snake!!!
Makes me all gooey just thinking about it.

Bushwalking on Kangaroo Is. lately along a track over which malley roots ran when one of the roots over which I was stepping came alive! Partner's scream was more frightening than the snake which I probably would not have even seen. Makes you wonder how I would have fared if it had bitten me - we were some distance from help.
Have resolved to carry an elastic bandage in future in similar situations.

On Yorke Peninsula over summer we encountered a brown about on metre long near the camping ground and walked quietly along with it for about 1/2 hr watching it go about its business which was fascinating and quite safe - we kept a respectful distance and it ignored us almost totally.

Give them a bit of space and treat them with respect and you are fine. Wear jeans or other thick trousers and be careful in long grass.
But watch mallee roots extra carefully!

Camper

Hi Marbro, It reminds me of a story a teacher told me many years back. He was travelling out bush and ran over a snake on the road. It transpired that he caused it to flip up and it wound itself around the axle of his car. But he did not know this. Next day he had the car in for service and the mechanic had the car up on the hoist.
Apparently the mechanic came running out of the workshop yelling "Snake"!

Regards

Mark

I guess I always expected to find snakes around the rocky outcrops in the outback, but actually never have. Conversely, walk anywhere at Wilsons Prom and you find them if you are quiet, and some of the other exposed points along the ocean in Vic as well. I was warned about snakes in the water when we canoed the Murray River, but didn't see any there either.

In 30 years of driving around this country I may have seen 20 snakes and most of those would have been in tropical Australia. There you will find pythons on the move in the wet season. They are fun to catch and then to release again. I go out of my way to miss a snake if it is on the road. Snakes are part of our life cycle.

The most dangerous snake in Australia, if not the world, is the Fierce Snake which is found in the Simpson Desert and Birdsville environs. So take heed all you desert travellers :-)

Well to answer your question......
I used to ride dirt bikes on my friends property in the Adelaide hills for years and never saw a snake....
Then my friend who is a snake catcher for Govt took me back to his property years later and we snuck around looking for reds and browns and found a dozen in about 2hrs at the same property we never saw a snake when we were younger....
Any noise or vibration and they are gone and most snakes seem to stay clear of roads.... So what i am saying is that there are bucket loads sliding around near us in the country at all times (except cold months) but we never see them because they hear us coming a mile away....
The times we have gone looking we have found heaps just lieing around near their little homes in the ground....
From what Scott tells me a Brown snake would be hard pressed to even bite through a good pair of socks because their fangs are only about 3 - 4mm in length... Most people are bitten straight onto flesh....
Now this is from my friends mouth not mine...(about the fang length)....

Been living in OZ for 2 years now but had plenty of visits before then. We have only seen 2 snakes, one now flat in the middle as it was on a dirt road in WA - it was either him or wreck the rental car that was'nt even supposed to be on a dirt road. The other was on a bush track in QLD and we drove off track around it.

We do carry a snake kit (Bandage) with us when we are in the bush and do a lot of bush walking and are careful not to disturb any.

Lots of info here, Sea
For links: SNAKES

Have any of you actually hit one while you were driving? Did it attach itself to the car like the above poster mentioned?

I'm getting a wide range of scenarios here and from others offline, so I guess whether you see one is dependent on hundreds of factors.

I've been heading off to the same property each year for the last 20 or so years. Up between Inglewood and Texas (Qld). This is trap rock country and the area is full of Brown's and Death Adders.

We always go up in winter and have never seen a single snake. A mate, who's a local reckons he comes across one virtually every other day in summer. One time they were baling lucerne and ended up with a big brown wound up in a bale of hay...and boy, was he cranky.

There's a pile of flitches in one spot .. left behind by the local sleeper cutters.
Our usual line, when we have a new chum on board is to suggest he should strip down to his jocks and .. armed with a short bit of fencing wire, slither in and see how many nasties he can stir up.

Never seem to have many takers ... funny that.