I’m walking along a boardwalk in Tinbinbilla Reserve. The boardwalk is elevated and skirts the edge of a pond that might/could contain platypus. I’m looking for the monotreme.
What I’m not looking for sees me before I see it. Not a monotreme, but a reptile. Then my eye catches movement. It’s too fast for me to get a pic and it slithers along 8′ or so before dropping over the edge of the boardwalk and into the brush.
About 4′ long, maybe a tad longer. Black. Nearly 2″ in diameter. Speaking to a Ranger Rick afterwards its identified as a, “Red Bellied Black Snake.”
I would estimate, given my walking speed, the speed of the snake, and point at which I saw it, that Mr. or Ms. Red Belly was, at most, 5′ to 6′ away from me when it saw me and decided to “run” away, from me, rather than to stand its ground. A really good choice, for me.
My Australian snakes app says the Red Belly Black Snake is, “Highly Venomous.” One website says it’s #22 on the list of most deadly snakes in the world.
In typical Aussie Style, the Ranger Rick was unconcerned with my sighting. “They’re used to people”, he tells me. That could be taken as a good thing, or as a bad thing.
Photo below from my snake app. Other photo from just a few meters further up the trail, seemed fitting.
