The Healesville Sanctuary is a branch of the Melbourne Zoo, out in the hills to the east. There one can find plenty of Australian fauna and flora without having to head out into the bush to find it. We headed up there on Sunday of my first weekend in Belgrave, a week after I'd arrived in Australia. I've got a decent selection of photos from there in the gallery, so have a look. The highlight of that day would have to have been one of the snakes that we saw.

We saw lots of snakes that day, but all the others were behind glass. This one was not only out and about its daily business, but happened to bring that business a lot closer to us than we expected. As we were hanging out in the wallaby compound, Andrea and Larkin were sitting on a bench off to my right a few yards. The kids were about the same distance away to the left. Suddenly I noticed, coming out from under the bench, mere inches away from Andy's right foot, a dark brown snake a about 4 feet long.  

For the first second or two I didn't think much about it - I'm used to seeing snakes at home, even ones of that size. But then it clicked that I was in Australia, and the chances of this snake being poisonous were very high, and it was heading straight to where Finn and Poppy were. It was clearly not intending anyone any harm, but was just minding its own business heading across the open area where we were towards the grass on the other side. But at the same time, we needed to give it a wide berth. It all happened very quickly - I moved to the kids to get them out of the way without freaking them out, Andrea and Larkin saw it as it came out from under them. and Larkin came over to get one of the kids as I got the other one and we just stepped aside by a couple yards to give it room.  No one paniced fortunately, but after the fact it was a little freaky.

When the kids were out of the way, we got the attention of an employee, who was about to leave the wallaby area (there was only us, her, and a couple of other asian tourists in there at the time). She radioed for someone from the reptile area to come over and deal with the snake. A couple of snake handlers were there within minutes, by which time the snake, who was apparently in no hurry, was just outside the wallaby compound in the grass. They easily identified it,  caught it, and bagged it, then took it a good distance away to release it where there were fewer people. Turns out it was an Australian Copperhead - moderately poisonous by Australian standards, according to Wikipedia, but still potentially lethal (although antivenom is readily available in most populated areas).  

So yes, an exciting day to say the least.