Transcript of AE 1277 - WWP: Trip to the Farm & Catching an Eastern Brown Snake... Eeek!!

G'day, you mob! How's it going? We are going to do another Walking with Pete episode, so I'm out of shape, guys. I'm not very fit at the moment, so I'm going to try and slowly, slowly walk 'cause I have a feeling that I'm going to get out of breath trying to talk and walk, walk and talk at the same time. But I'm going to do my very best because, yeah, we had some requests for more Walking With Pete episodes recently and I'm like, you know what? It's a good idea. It's a good idea.

So, what are we going to talk about today? Today? It was really cold last night. I think it got down to, like, six degrees Celsius here where I live, on the Bellarine Peninsula. But it was even colder than that over the weekend when we were over Bendigo Way. We were up at Bendigo, at my parents, my grandparents farm. So my wife, my kids and I, Joey and Joana, Joana and Noah, and my parents all went up to the farm. We've been doing this since we were kids. Well, I think even my parents have been doing this to some degree since my, my mum at least was probably a teenager.

The farm has been owned by my grandparents for probably 60 years. Maybe, maybe going on 60 years, probably between 50 and 60 years. Either way, we've been doing it a lot. So yeah, it got really cold. It got below zero, I think. One night while we were up there, and I think it's because we're whenever you go inland down here in the south east of Australia and up into the sort of centre of Victoria, it gets colder compared to the coast. Because I think the, the ocean sort of acts as a bit of a warm blanket and keeps things from getting too cold.

So I don't know if, if this year, Curlewis, a little suburb that I live in is going to get anywhere near zero. That'd be pretty impressive. But I think places like Bendigo, and especially if you go to the high country into the mountains, it's going to get well and truly below zero. So yeah, that was interesting.

But I thought I would tell you about the trip to the farm. So it's been a while. I think I talked about this in some Walking with Pete episodes a few years ago. I think I was there was one episode where I was telling you about catching an eastern brown snake, right. Australia's second most venomous snake, second to the, the taipan. And it's actually the snake that ends up, unfortunately causing the most, most deaths in Australia.

So I did an episode on that. When I was a little kid, to sort of recap it. I went up to the farm. I think it would have been during summer, maybe, you know, early early January, around that period.

And I growing up, I was always a kid who loved lifting rocks up and, you know, seeing what was what was below the rock. So they're going to be bugs are they're going to be, you know, little animals, all that sort of jazz. And I remember this year I think I was probably like eight, nine, ten, I can't remember.

But I remember going out and lifting a rock up and finding a little snake that just slithered off, slithered off really quickly and disappeared down a little hole. And I was like, God damn, that would have been so cool to catch and to show my parents. Anyway, so we, I missed it. And I think also it was just as we were about to leave and go home for, for that trip.

So anyway, that happened and then we came back during winter. Would have been like, you know, 4 or 5 months later when it was much colder. And as soon as we got to the farm, I think it would have been we would have arrived at night and I would have gone out in the morning. But pretty much first thing when I had the opportunity, I got outside, went to the same rock, lifted it up and the snake was curled up there. But this time, because it was so cold, he couldn't go anywhere. He was too, he wasn't even going to move.

So I used a stick to put him into a bucket. You know, I knew these guys were very venomous and dangerous and you would never touch one with your bare hands, especially if you had no idea what you were doing or you didn't know what the snake was. So I put it in the bucket, carried it inside with no lid on it, and I think everyone freaked out. They were kind of like half excited for me, but also half kind of like, Jesus, Pete, why have you brought this inside? For the love of God, take take it back outside and get rid of it.

So yeah. Anyway, you can go back and listen to that story. Ever since that time, though, you know, I was always fossicking, looking for animals up at the farm, picking up different rocks. I would always find the standard things, you know, lizards and bugs and frogs and geckos, that sort of stuff. But I never found another snake.

Until this weekend. So, this was a funny one. I think Noah and Joey have been up at least once before. And would have probably been about two years ago. So they don't, I don't think they'd remember it, but they remember hearing these sorts of stories. And my wife knows the snake story. She would have probably heard it on the podcast as well, or listen to the episode when I was recording it, and she would always tell Noah about it.

So anyway, fast forward to last weekend and we went up to the farm. And Noah, I was really surprised. But Noah really got into the fossicking thing. The lifting up rocks and looking for little animals. You know, it's just, it's kind of like playing Pokemon for real, right? So we were running around in the, in the yard and out whilst going for walks down to the dam and everything and lifting up rocks and finding skinks and bugs and frogs, all that sort of stuff.

And then we came back to the cabin and I think we went up. There's this large rock pile that is up near sort of the top of the hill above where the cabin is near some near some, what would you call them? Sheds, I guess. Large sheds where stuff's kept, storage and shearing shed, and that sort of stuff. And the rocks were originally there. I think they've probably been there for about 40 years. They were there originally to help finish the, sort of patio, that my grandparents have out the front of the the cabin. There's like a stone sort of deck walkway kind of thing there that you can go out and stand on that's never been finished. Because half the stones. Yeah, just they sort of did it all the way up to the front of the door and then stopped and didn't finish it off.

So these rocks are sitting there in a pile and they are prime, prime real estate for little critters, little animals to go and live in. So, you know, over the years I lifted up these rocks, some of the rocks around the outside. I've never gone through the entire pile, because it's quite big, right? And the rocks are really large. They're probably like 50 kilos, give or take.

And so I would go and find things like large skinks and geckos and even large spiders, all that sort of stuff that would be hiding in these rocks. So I knew it was be a spot to take Noah and go and check it out because I'm like, Oh, you know, every time I've come up here, we go up there and there's usually a skink or something hiding under the rocks. We found a skink.

And then the next rock that I lifted up, there was an eastern brown snake! A little one, just curled up underneath it. And I just couldn't believe it. I, I was just like, what are they? What are the chances? Like, I haven't seen one of these in 30 years, maybe 20 something years, up at the farm? Despite coming up, you know, at least when I was younger, multiple times a year and fossicking all the time. But there, there was one right in front of me and everyone got really excited.

My kids were there, my wife was there. She's like, Put it in the bucket! And I, it was one of those things, I'm very aware of how dangerous these animals are. So I was told them, you know, stand back, you know, don't don't come near it. We're not going to touch it. Kids, look at this. Don't ever. If you find one of these, don't ever touch it with your hands. And I put it. I got a stick. I think Kel ran off and grabbed a stick for me.

And I used that to sort of put into the coils of this little snake. It would have fit in your hand if you picked it up, right. Curled up. It was very small and put it in the bucket. It was clear that it had hatched from the last season of eggs from an eastern brown.

An eastern brown snake can get to, I don't know, two, 2.5m long, you know, probably the diameter of about 2 or 3 fingers. And so, yeah, I could tell it was about, I don't know, a few months old and it was sort of hibernating under this rock anyway. So I took it down to the, to the cabin to show Mum and dad because I was just sort of speechless. I couldn't believe it. And the kids were really excited.

It was kind of cool to share that moment with them and show them, you know, this is this potentially very deadly animal, but also something very, very cool.

You know, snakes are cool animals. So I put the lid on it. In fact, I think we carried it down with no lid. And I told Mum, you know, we're going to need a lid. Put a lid on this, put a lid on it and we'll put it. I put it around the corner on the little stone patio away from where everyone was in the shade, thinking, all right, we'll go for a walk, come back, and then I'll put it in the car and I'll go and take it to let go in the forest, you know, a few kilometres away, just so it's away from the house, because the last thing you want is loads of eastern brown snakes living around your home.

So what happened? We went for the walk. We came back and mum had moved the lizard. The lizard? The snake, and the container around the corner behind the house. And she hadn't realised that the sun was rising and the shadows moved, and the snake was now well and truly in the sun heating up. So when we went to get the bucket, because we all piled in the car, the kids wanted to go see it get let go and everything like that. The snake was very much awake and moving around, agitated, trying to get out of the container, and I was just sitting there in the car, mum holding the container.

I'm like, if this lid comes off. We're fucked, you know. Someone could get bit. The snake could crawl under one of the seats, never to be seen again. And we're going to have to have the entire car taken apart before we feel safe driving the freaking thing ever again. So we got to the front gate, and I'm like, yeah, no, we're gonna have to go back and, put this thing in the fridge. I think mum was like, yeah, we'll put it in the fridge and cool it down just so that it's not moving as much. And it's easier, safer to kind of, you know, deal with later on.

So we went back, put it in the fridge for about an hour just to cool it down. It wasn't, you know, it's not going to kill it. It's just going to cool it down, stop it moving loads. And then took it out and mum and I drove off down to the state forest nearby in order to let it go. And it was pretty funny. Like I had to, like, carefully pry the lid open, like sort of loosen the lid around the edges of this bucket container type thing and then make it so that I could lift the lid off quickly, and then just grab the bottom of the container and empty the snake out onto a log. So I went and tried to find somewhere that it would be able to get some cover.

You know, there's probably kookaburras hanging around or birds of prey that would, you know, pounce at the opportunity to come down and eat this thing. And yeah, he sort of unfurled or uncoiled slowly because he was very cold, turned around and kind of flicked his tongue a few times and just stared at me, and I put him somewhere that was right near this log, but in the sun, so he could warm up quickly and then hopefully go and hide.

So that was a very interesting event. My son was really stoked because before we had left, we left on a Friday night shortly after I'd picked them up from Day-care to go to the farm. And I remember when we were there, the Day-care teachers were like, get some, get some, show and tell whilst you're away. Like, Noah and Joey were really pumped and they were obviously telling the teacher, we're going away to the farm, we're going on a little holiday. There's it's going to be so much fun. We're going to see nature, we're going to do all this stuff. We're going to see a fire, you know, like a, an open fire inside the house. And the teacher was like, get some show and tell photos.

So we took a bunch of photos of the snake and of other things like sitting in front of the fire, having marshmallows on the fire, you know, going for walks, throwing rocks into the dam, all that sort of stuff. And yeah, the kids had a great time!

But it was just, it was beautiful to be able to share that with them, because ever since I can remember, my parents took me up to this farm that my grandparents bought. I think they bought it in the 60s probably then. So they've had it. Yeah, ages. It'll be close to 60 years and it was just a big part of my life.

My grandpa used to do shearing up there, like he would have sheep on the farm and they would, you know, get us to come up on a regular basis every few months. There'd be some kind of activity that had to be done with the sheep, right? You'd have to worm them or dip them, you know, for parasites, all that sort of stuff. They'd get shorn. You'd have to move them from one paddock to another. So you would go out there and open a gate and then, you know, with all the family, try and sort of herd them towards the gate and get them to walk into the next field so that you could give the paddock behind a rest and let the grass grow back. And yeah, it was just a beautiful part of growing up that it was funny taking it.

I took it for granted when I was a kid. I definitely took it for granted and thought, everyone's got this kind of thing. But the older I get and the more you know, I talk to other people from wherever they are, you know, whether it's my wife or friends and family here in Australia, I realised that not everyone got to ever do that sort of thing, where, you know, someone in the family had a property in the bush on farmland and they got to go away. You know, people in the family got to go away and stay there and enjoy the, the countryside. So yeah, it was a lot of fun. A lot of fun.

What else did we do while we were there? We, we went for lots of walks. It's one of those places. There's loads of hills. There's some really nice scenery. There's forests, there's dams. And it's just nice to kind of walk around, you know, from one place to the other.

We saw some wedge tailed eagles, some wedgies or 'a wedgie' who was just hovering around looking for looking for food. That was really cool. He hung around for quite a while, looking for probably rabbits or dead, you know, kangaroos or sheep or whatever he could get his talons and and beak into. So that was cool.

The other thing that was really interesting was that I hadn't been up for a while. It's the older I've gotten, the less frequently I've gone to the farm.

But it's been interesting to watch the trees grow on the driveway into the farm, because when we were kids. Probably, you know, eight, nine years old. My grandparents and my folks and us, we all went up and we planted these trees along the side of the road there because it was sort of the driveway goes through some paddocks and they were just sort of bare. There was nothing there. There was no trees. It was just sort of grass and rocks. So they wanted to create some some shade and, you know, have some trees and everything along there.

So we planted them years ago when I was a little kid and going back there now they're massive, like fully grown huge trees. And it was one of those things that I never you never really get to appreciate how, how these trees age and how big they get in a certain amount of time, especially gum trees. You kind of just see them around, but you don't really notice them growing from one year to the next. But when I did go up and I realised, like, I remember putting these trees in the ground as little saplings that, you know, you could pick up with two hands that fit in the back of a trailer. And now they're, you know, they probably have a diameter of a metre, a metre and a half.

They're probably 10 or 15m tall, maybe even taller than that, you know, huge branches, loads of leaf cover, loads of shade. It was really impressive being able to see these trees that we had once planted. You know, it's funny, it's like that fable or that story of plant trees that you won't be around to sit in the shade of, right? So you do it for your kids, you do it for your family. And my grandparents have kind of done that.

And there's a whole bunch of trees around the the farm, the cabin that have always been there and I haven't really noticed. And some of them are quite large. And mum was telling me, no, no, we planted those, you know, before you were born and look at the size of them now. So that was really cool.

What else? We didn't really get to see the sheep. I don't think the sheep were there. So my grandfather stopped kind of having sheep on the farm as his own hobby. It was something he would do on weekends. He'd go up there and take care of the sheep and do all that sort of stuff. But he's now 94, so, you know, it's well and truly beyond what he can, what he can handle. So the sheep are still there, but they're the neighbour's sheep. I think they rent the land out effectively to have sheep on it, so that the neighbours can effectively graze their sheep on the land.

And I think it's mainly for wool. I'm not sure if they, they have lambs or if they use them for meat, but they definitely use them for wool, which is really cool and it's nice to just see them around, you know, you get to hear them.

When we drove in, there were loads of kangaroos. We came, we drove up on that Friday night and it was really dark when we got to the farm, and it was just really cool because Kel got to see- the kids were asleep, but Kel got to see loads of large kangaroos on the farm, just sort of getting scared by the headlights and, and running off into the distance. So that was pretty cool too.

But yeah, it's been a good weekend. The kids had a lot of fun. One of the funny things was they not a single time did they ask for TV. So they just hung out with me, with my wife, with their grandparents, and they were just so enamoured with all these other activities, these animals around, all that sort of stuff, the fire, playing that they just didn't want to watch TV at all. They didn't even think to ask. So that was really cool to see too. Yeah.

Anyway, you guys will have to let me know if you have this kind of experience with your families, you know.

Do you guys, where have you from? Where have you live? Do you have a property where you get to go and enjoy nature effectively with your friends and family on a regular basis?

And I think the good thing about it, you know, you can go on holidays and you can go to different locations around the world and see different things, which is, you know, amazing. But there's something to be said, I think, about going back to the same place on a regular basis and being able to see it change, you know, especially seeing it change through the seasons, seeing the trees get bigger and change and all that sort of thing. Whereas if you go to new locations all the time, you don't really get to experience, you don't get to experience it in that way.

So yeah, anyway, hopefully you're enjoying these episodes again. If you want me to do more of these Walking With Pete ones where I kind of just talk about my life and hopefully try and get outside and get a bit of exercise whilst not losing my breath. Let me know! Send me an email, send me a message on the social medias or on my website and yeah, say that you you like them and if you don't like them you can let me know as well. Anyway, I'm Pete, this is Walking with Pete. I hope you enjoyed it and I'll chat to you next time!