Floods jumble Australia's animal kingdom (News Feature)

By Sid Astbury Jan 6, 2011, 5:05 GMT

Sydney - If you are afraid of slithery creatures, don't read on.

There are snakes galore in Queensland, flushed out by the worst floods in 50 years, and they are doing whatever they can to cling on to life.

Ian Stewart, the policeman in charge of disaster relief, tells of a farming couple who are sharing the only dry land left on their isolated property with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of snakes.

'It must have been an amazing scene,' said Stewart, the waterlogged state's deputy police commissioner.

Stewart has had flown in extra supplies of the antivenin that people bitten by venomous snakes need to counter the poison.

'We've made sure we've warned communities that snakes are coming out,' he said.

Those among the 75,000 people of Rockhampton who are guarding their flooded properties, don't need telling there are lots of snakes about.

Fitzroy Hotel owner-manager Tony Higgins has had snakes for company since becoming marooned in what he jokingly refers to as his 'floatel' a week ago.

'There's certainly plenty of them,' he said. 'I've got a beer garden out the back of the pub and it's now full of water and I reckon they're using it as a lap pool to get fit for the next leg of their journey.'

Higgins, a veteran of the 1991 floods, is not fazed by the possibility of snakebites from any of the 40 different species in and around Rockhampton.

'The poor buggers, they're probably looking for dry ground too,' he said. 'They get out of your way as long as you stay out of theirs. They're tired too. They're not water animals.'

Some residents are not so blase about the threat.

John Peacock, evacuated with just what he could grab as he went out the door, is not game to wade back through the murky, waist-high floodwater to retrieve valuables from his house.

'There's heaps of snakes at the moment in that water and I just knew if I went back to have a look and see if I could salvage anything that I was taking the risk of getting bitten,' Peacock said. 'It's really, really dirty.'

Raymond Hoser, an expert on central Queensland snakes, said that Higgins was taking the right approach to reptiles that are having as tough a time as the humans.

'Snakes will generally run away from people,' he said. 'They don't chomp people unless they're picked up or attacked. Most are venomous, but most are not dangerously venomous.'

The worry for those who fear snakes is that the cleaning up is likely to prove more alarming that the actual flooding.

Stewart warned that snakes driven out of their holes by the flooding will look for new nesting places when the water subsides. 'They're getting into ceilings,' he said.

According to Hoser, they get under any cover they can find and could attack if disturbed.

Those who don't mind snakes but have a thing about rats could have something to look out for once the waters recede, experts warn.

Noel Preece, a biologist who runs Queensland-based environmental consultancy Australian Tropical Expertise, said floods were like bushfires in that they devastated some populations but allowed others to flourish.

'It's an unsettled period because some animals, the rats for instance, can go into plague proportions once the floods have gone,' he said.

When the waters subside and towns like Rockhampton, Condamine, Theodore and Emerald are repopulated, the locals may find a new balance in nature.

John Hooper is the mayor of Banana Shire and wants snake handlers to go in to Theodore to remove reptiles riled from being uprooted by the floods.

'I'm hearing stories that it's bad,' he said. 'I'm told they're bloody angry, so people will have to be very careful.'

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