Behind this Murray Bridge shopfront is SA’s biggest collection of venomous snakes

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Julian Craig and Julie Morris’s extensive snake collection is housed in Snakes Alive and Supplies in Seventh Street, Murray Bridge.

Anyone is welcome to have a look and even get up close and personal in the snake pit.

Mr Craig and Ms Morris hope people will be able to learn about snakes by wandering into their shop – and yes, Boofy the dog is another drawcard.

“We don’t charge to come in, so it’s educational,” Ms Morris said.

The highlight of visiting Snakes Alive and Supplies is the snake pit experience, where people can have snakes crawl around them under the expert guidance of Mr Craig, a herpetologist.

“We’re probably the only place in Australia that will allow you to go into a pit with venomous snakes,” he said.

“The snake pit experience is about getting people to experience how and why a snake behaves as it does.”

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The youngest person to have stepped inside the snake pit was a four-year-old boy, who was gifted the special experience for his birthday – “he got a certificate and he took it to kindy,” Ms Morris said.

Mr Craig said that going into the snake pit was a way to increase people’s knowledge of snakes and their confidence around snakes – as well as their confidence in general.

“People will know how to behave with a red-belly across their feet,” he said.

“It’s 100 per cent good for people’s confidence.

“The feedback we’ve had from the snake pit’s been phenomenal: ‘I feel more comfortable now’ or ‘I still don’t like snakes, but I feel safer now’.”

Snake handler started learning during childhood

Mr Craig’s fascination with snakes began when he was around five years old, after an encounter fit for a superhero origin story.

“The king cobra got me into snakes back in 1967,” he said.

“My family took me to a reptile park in Gosford.

“The king cobra stood up and flared, and I just stood there and didn’t see the rest of the snakes.”

Mr Craig started handling venomous snakes around the age of nine, when living with his anthropologist parents in a village in western Papua New Guinea.

“We kept five death adders as pets and a Papuan black snake and a small-eyed snake, and my dad made cages for them,” he said.

The best thing to do if you encountered a snake in the wild, Mr Craig said, was to stand still and watch it.

However, it paid to be alert.

The most common snake in the Murraylands was the eastern brown snake, “the most dangerous snake in Australia”.

“Sixty to seventy per cent of all bites happen from eastern brown snakes,” he said.

“The last 13 out of 15 people to have died (in Australia) from a snake bite were bitten by eastern brown snakes.”

One factor that made them so dangerous, he said, was that snake bites didn’t sting like a bee, wasp or ant.

“That’s what makes snakes so dangerous – people don’t take note of the bite.”

Unusual business could become a tourist attraction

To visit the snakes in the Craigs’ shop is fee; a fee applies for the potentially life-changing snake pit experience.

People who have snakes as pets can also buy supplies, protective and snake-catching equipment, first aid kits and more from the shop.

In addition, Mr Craig has a training business which provides specialist training involving snakes and other venomous animals; and he designs and sells gaiters, a protective garment intended to prevent snakes biting people’s ankles or lower legs.

In time, the couple hoped to expand their Murray Bridge operations.

“I want to get an exotics licence to have exotic snakes and expand into Australia’s only dedicated snake zoo,” Mr Craig said.

“There are no black mambas in Australia, so I want to be the first.

“With larger facilities, we can build open pits of snakes and run tours through the pits – one with taipans and death adders – so people can interact rather than in a caged environment.

“The Old Puzzle Park near the Swanport Hotel would be the ideal location.”