Featured Letter
TAIPAN MEMORIES
Recently I was discussing with my older brother an incident that happened when I was just 11 years old. As a Grade Six student at Hughesdale Primary School, I was fortunate to attend weekly half-day horticultural classes at the State Schools’ (Plant) Nursery, situated next to the railway line at Hughesdale. I recalled that one day in the late winter of 1950, Mr Murnane, the director of the nursery, informed our class of a recently captured taipan sent down from Queensland and that he had the opportunity to view it at the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories, where it was held in a glass-topped box to be ‘milked’ for its venom in the hope of enabling an antivenene to be produced. Imagine my surprise a few days ago, on opening the latest issue of AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC
(AG 160), to see the photo of the very same taipan, now deceased, in a pickling jar! Mr Murnane told our class that someone present at the display of the snake passed his arm quickly across the glass-topped box; it was noted that the snake had left marks at five different spots on the underside of the glass, emphasising how quickly and repeatedly it had reacted. Greg Eccleston, Malvern, VIC
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