Reptile park had Peninsula origins

Before Steve "Crikey" Irwin, there was Eric "the snakeman" Worrell. Eric Worrell was the founder of the Central Coast icon, the Australian Reptile Park. However the Park, a major tourist drawcard to the Central Coast over the years, had its origins on the Peninsula. This article is reproduced from the Central Coast Wires wildlife rescue magazine, Kookaburra Cackle.

The work of Australia's original snake man will long be remembered. Australia's original television-friendly reptile lover was as brazen and well-loved as his modem counterpart, Steve Irwin.

His Australian Reptile Park has also survived many years and overcome several hurdles to entertain and educate the wider public about this country's less-than-cuddly wildlife.

Overseen by the famous giant dinosaur, Ploddy, at its entrance, the park is a school holiday activity visited by hundreds of children during school holidays.

Eric Worrell's interest in reptiles was evident from an early age.

Born in Granville in 1924, he collected frogs on the way home from pre-school and spent hours watching tiny lizards.

As a schoolboy in Paddington, he kept a backyard zoo which featured snakes, lizards, frogs, rats, mice, guinea pigs, rabbits, goldfish and a dingo the Worrell family picked up as a stray in the city.

Worrell told friends he made up his mind to become a naturalist at 11 and by 15 he had decided to specialise in reptiles.

His big opportunity to study native wildlife came when he left school and worked as a civilian blacksmith in Darwin during World War 2.

There he devoted his spare time to searching out and observing the abundance of reptiles.

After the war, Worrell returned to Sydney but missed the Northern Territory and headed back to continue his studies, financing his lifestyle by working as a freelance wildlife journalist.

Local Aborigines helped his work by bringing him harmless snakes, lizards and tortoises in exchange for common items such as sugar, flour, tea, powdered milk and hair combs.

Eventually Worrell made his way to the East Alligator River in Arnhem Land, which he described as a herpetologist's paradise.

Here he was tracked down by the director of the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories and offered a job providing the institution with poisonous-snake venom.

At the time, Australian supplies of antivenene were desperately low and the laboratories' previous snake man, Tom Lades, had retired.

Worrell negotiated to provide venom to the laboratories on a freelance basis so he could continue his studies and writing.

It was at this time that Eric Worrell set up the Ocean Beach Aquarium at Umina in 1948.

This aquarium would be the forerunner of the Australian Reptile Park.

Worrell and his childhood friend George Cann, known as the Snakey of La Perouse, then collected deadly tiger snakes from the swollen rivers in western NSW.

Their method was to snatch the snakes by the tail and drop them headfirst into a sack and their trip netted more than 500 snakes.

In 1951, a regular supply of tiger snake venom began to be provided to the laboratories from Worrell's aquarium.

At this time, only tiger snake antivenine was produced and was used for all types of snake bites, with varying degrees of success.

However, a flurry of taipan bites in the early 1950s established this snake as the world's deadliest for its size, and work began to develop a specific antivenene for its bite.

Worrell was asked to go to Queensland to collect taipan venom. There he collected nine different varieties and began a breeding program.

He then became the main supplier of taipan venom to the laboratories in the lead-up to the release of the new antivenene in 1955.

Work on antivenenes for the brown snake and the death adder then began.

A combined antivenene, effective against any unidentified snake in Australia, was also created.

While this work was going on, the Ocean Beach Aquarium moved to North Gosford and renamed the Australian Reptile Park.

At first, it was just two snake pits and a kiosk but it quickly grew and Worrell's reputation as a naturalist also bloomed.

He became known to the Australian public through a wide variety of magazine articles, popular books and television appearances.

His detailed and scholarly books were highly respected, even though he had no formal zoological training.

In 1970, Worrell's life-saving role in the development of snake anti-venenes was recognised with an MBE presented by the Queen.

That year, the antivenene program saw the park providing laboratories with funnel-web spider venom.

It took until 1980 to get a successful funnel-web anti-venom into hospitals and it proved yet another life-saving program in which Worrell was involved.

When he died in 1987, Worrell left Australia the legacy of his contribution to the development of vital snake antivenene.

Newsletter, March 1