Science & Nature
Eastern Brown Snakes in Spring: Keep Still, Call 000, Bandage Firmly
If a brown snake might have bitten someone, treat it as a bite. Call 000.
Do not wait for pain, swelling or two neat puncture marks. The Australian Museum says the initial bite of an eastern brown snake is generally painless and often difficult to detect, and its fangs are only about 3 mm long. A bite in long grass can go unnoticed. Waiting for proof only burns time.
Picture the usual case. Someone is pulling weeds along the fence or reaching into a woodpile. There is a brush against the ankle, or a glimpse of a snake sliding away. Nothing hurts. The temptation is to shrug and get on with the job. That is the wrong call. A possible bite gets the full response until a hospital says otherwise.
Spring is when this stops being theory. The snakes are out, people are out in the yard, and the two meet. What follows covers why spring matters, where brown snakes turn up, how dangerous they are, and pressure immobilisation first aid in the exact order the authorities give it.
Why spring
The eastern brown is a warm-weather snake, and spring is its season. In a survey across central southern New South Wales, the Australian Museum reports, eastern browns were encountered at the highest rate in spring.
Several things line up at once. Males become active earlier in the season, which is why most of the brown snakes found dead on roads in spring are males. Breeding runs from mid to late spring, so males are on the move. And the species will bask at air temperatures as low as 14°C, which means a mild, sunny morning is enough to bring one into the open.
Since the shortest day of the year, the days have been stretching out and the ground has been warming. By October the snakes have answered. A cool morning with sun on it is no guarantee of anything.
People come back outside at the same time. Weekend clean-ups, the first mow of the year, kids in the garden after school, sheds opened up for the first time since autumn. The overlap is the risk.
None of this is a reason to stay indoors. It is a reason to change habits through spring: look where you step, look before you lift, and treat every snake in the yard as one to walk away from.
Expect them. Plan for them.
Where they turn up
Eastern browns are not confined to the bush. The Australian Museum describes them in open country, farmland and the suburban fringe, sheltering under logs, rocks, sheets of iron and building material. Every item on that list can be found in an ordinary backyard.
healthdirect’s list of where snakes are likely to be is just as domestic: long grass, leaf litter, backyards, sheds, near water, and near mice and rats. A shed with a rodent problem is a shed worth checking. So is the stack of offcuts that has sat behind the garage since the last renovation.
The fatal cases bear this out. A University of Melbourne summary of a review of National Coronial Information System records by Welton and colleagues, published in Toxicon, found that more than half of the fatal bites happened in or near the home. Nearly half happened in urban areas.
Spring is also when the yard gets its first serious attention of the year. Mowing long grass, lifting old sheets of iron, clearing the woodpile and getting to work on a winter-battered lawn all put hands and ankles exactly where a brown snake shelters. Look before lifting anything that has been lying on the ground. Wear boots, not thongs.
Around the house, the practical checks are simple. Keep grass short along paths and play areas. Store iron, timber and building material off the ground or off the property. Deal with mice and rats. Every one of those steps takes something off the Australian Museum’s or healthdirect’s list.
The backyard is snake country.
How dangerous, in numbers
The coronial review covered 2000 to 2016 and found 35 snakebite deaths in Australia. Brown snakes caused 23 of them. healthdirect reports that about 1 in 3 hospital visits for snakebite are for brown snake bites, puts deaths at 1 to 4 a year nationally, and says about 5 in every 100 people bitten are given antivenom.
That last figure needs careful reading. It is no reason to wait and see. The first aid is the same for every suspected bite, and it starts before anyone knows how serious this one is.
The species makes no difference to that first aid either. ANZCOR recommends pressure immobilisation for bites from all Australian venomous snakes. Identifying the snake is a job for the hospital. The person on the ground has one job: get the response right.
One detail from the coronial review stands out. Up to seven of the people who died were bitten while trying to pick a snake up. Those bites did not have to happen.
Leave it alone.
If you see one
Back away to a safe distance and let it go. healthdirect is plain on this: do not try to catch it or kill it, and many snakes are protected anyway. Get everyone else well back too.
Watch the posture. The Australian Museum describes the eastern brown’s threat display, with the neck spread and the head raised, and that display comes before most bites. A snake holding that pose is warning. The warning is the cue to leave.
Do not rely on colour to decide what it is. Eastern browns vary widely in colour, and a wrong identification is a real risk. Any snake that might be a brown gets treated as one.
Children need the rule in plain words: stop, back away, tell an adult. They also need to know that a bite might not hurt, so “something touched my leg” near long grass is worth saying out loud. An adult who hears that treats it as a possible bite.
Distance is the whole plan.
First aid, in order
This is the section to read twice. The order comes from the NSW Poisons Information Centre and healthdirect, and the bandaging follows ANZCOR Guideline 9.4.8, the Australian and New Zealand first aid guideline on pressure immobilisation.
- Call 000. If 000 does not connect on a mobile, call 112.
- Get the person away from the snake.
- Keep them still and calm. ANZCOR’s wording is to keep the victim and the limb completely at rest. No walking, no running, no getting up to fetch things.
- Bandage. Use a broad elasticised bandage, 10 to 15 cm wide. Apply it firmly over the bite site. Then apply a second bandage, starting at the fingers or toes and working up to cover the whole limb. Bandage over clothing if possible. It should be tight enough that a finger will not slide under it easily.
- Splint the limb. Keep it from moving. For a bite on the arm, add a sling.
- Note the time and mark the site. Write down when the bite happened, and mark the bite site on the bandage.
- Start CPR if they stop breathing normally.
The order is deliberate. The call goes first because an ambulance takes time to arrive, and everything else on the list can be done while it is on its way. Getting the person away from the snake comes second. Stillness comes before the bandage, because a person walking about while someone hunts for a bandage has already broken step three.
The bandage comes down to three checks. Is it broad and elasticised, 10 to 15 cm wide? Is there one firm over the bite, and a second running from the fingers or toes up the whole limb? Is it firm enough that a finger will not slide under easily? Three yeses, then the splint.
While waiting, keep them lying still, keep them calm and keep watching their breathing. If it stops being normal, CPR starts. Send someone else out to the street or the gate to wave the ambulance in.
Bring the ambulance to the person. The person does not go to the ambulance, does not walk to the car and does not get up to meet anyone at the gate.
A word on the bandage itself. ANZCOR recommends pressure immobilisation for bites from all Australian venomous snakes, and it is the standard. ANZCOR also notes that field studies have not shown a clear benefit, and that poor application is common. Read those two lines together. The bandage is the recommended standard, and it only counts if it is applied properly: broad, firm, the whole limb, then splinted. A loose wrap around the ankle is not the technique.
Practise it once on a healthy leg before it is ever needed. A bandage in a drawer is little use if nobody in the house has ever wrapped one. One short session on a willing leg, toes to hip, then a broom handle as the splint, and the order sticks.
What not to do
ANZCOR, healthdirect and the NSW Poisons Information Centre rule all of these out.
- Do not wash the bite. Venom left on the skin can help identify the snake.
- Do not cut the bite.
- Do not suck the bite.
- Do not use a tourniquet.
- Do not let the person run. Stillness is the instruction.
- Do not remove the bandage before hospital. Once it is on, it stays on.
- Do not try to catch or kill the snake. The venom on the skin does the identifying.
Cutting and sucking belong to old films and older advice. A tourniquet is out, full stop, and it is no substitute for the bandage. Washing feels like the responsible thing to do, but it removes the venom that can identify the snake. Running, even a short way to get help, breaks the stillness the whole method depends on.
None of these is negotiable.
Not every bite lands on an arm or a leg. For a bite on the body or the head, ANZCOR says to apply firm pressure over the bite site only. Never restrict breathing, and never press on the neck.
Pressure, stillness, then wait for help.
Alone, or far from help
The principle holds on a solo walk, on a farm or at the far end of a long driveway with nobody home. Call 000 first, as always.
ANZCOR’s guidance for someone on their own is direct. Bandage as completely as you can, then stay still until help arrives. If no help can reach you, apply local pressure over the bite and move yourself to get help.
Moving is the last resort, kept for the case where help cannot come. Where help can come, stay put and let it.
Plan for this before spring gets going. Before working alone somewhere remote, tell someone where you will be and when you expect to finish. Carry the phone on you, not in the ute. Keep the bandages within reach, not back at the house.
Stillness first, if at all possible.
Three things to have ready before summer
Two broad elastic bandages in the car, and two in the house. The technique uses one firmly over the bite and a second up the whole limb, so one bandage is not enough. Check they are the broad elasticised kind, 10 to 15 cm wide. A thin roll left over from a sprained wrist will not do the job. Keep them where they can be reached in seconds: the glovebox, the laundry, the hook by the back door.
The numbers, known. 000 for the emergency, 112 as the mobile fallback, and the Poisons Information Centre on 13 11 26. Save that last one in the phone today, while nothing is happening.
Long trousers and boots for yard work. The Australian Museum’s advice is simple clothing sense. Whether the job is building raised garden beds, weeding the back fence line or clearing out the shed, wear long trousers, boots and gloves. Bare ankles in long grass in October are an invitation.
One habit goes with all three. If anyone working outside says something brushed or pricked their leg, stop the job and take it seriously. That is how the painless bite gets caught.
The bite may never be felt. Assume it. Call 000, keep still, bandage firmly.
Sources: ANZCOR Guideline 9.4.8, Envenomation: Pressure Immobilisation Technique, Australian Resuscitation Council (https://www.anzcor.org/home/first-aid/guideline-9-4-8-envenomation-pressure-immobilisation-technique); Snake bites, healthdirect (https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/snake-bites); Eastern Brown Snake, Australian Museum (https://australian.museum/learn/animals/reptiles/eastern-brown-snake/)