The Australian Reptile Academy helps everyone working in the bush to become familiar with handling and moving dangerous snakes.
Story Bruce McMahon Photo David Kelly
The herpetologist with a lifelong fascination with reptiles was photographing, up close, Indonesia’s white-lipped pit viper when the flash fired. The viper sensed the heat, struck out at Chris Hay and left him with a black and swollen left hand, two doses of antivenom at a hospital in Denpasar, fang scars and another life lesson.
In 40 years of handling snakes, Chris has survived five serious envenomations requiring hospitalisation, including once being in a coma for three days after being bitten by a death adder.
Forever learning, the Queenslander came to realise that he and his wife Dr Christina Zdenek have the skill set to train others in what to do, and what not to do, when handling venomous snakes. Seven years ago they set up the Australian Reptile Academy, which has now taught more than 600 people the art of snake wrangling, in scrubland outside Gatton in the Lockyer Valley.
Clients vary from ecologists working on projects that involve land clearing and relocating animals before dozers arrive, to farmers and zookeepers. “One guy from out west didn’t particularly like snakes, but had nothing against them and recognised snakes were saving stock feed,” Chris says. “He wanted to be able to relocate them himself, take them into the paddock and let them go.”
This story excerpt is from issue #167
Outback Magazine: June/July 2026
