PAPUA NEW GUINEA SNAKEBITE PROJECT
THE TEMPTATION OF MARK

I know the Magi Highway well. Last time I was in PNG, in 2010 when I was covering for Dave when he was seconded to the WHO in Geneva, I did quite a lot of fieldwork down around City Mission and Mt Diamond Mission. In the past I have driven the roads down to Hula, Kwikila, Rigo, Cape Rodney, Amazon Bay and Kupiano on the Marshall Lagoon. I first came down here looking for snakes in 1990 when I witnessed my field assistant have a hex put on him by a sangorma or magic man at a place called Bannon Bridge, but that is another story.

For the first couple of hours we drove hard on good roads (much improved since the 90s when they were pot-holed dirt roads), slowing only for a police road-block before Kwikila. The other side of Kwikila we stopped at a forested creek and while Dave and I talked about the plans for the day the guys took off into the bush to search for snakes.

A short while later there was a shout of "snake, taipan, taipan" which spurred me to dash into the bush with my M1 tongs, although I was driving in sandals rather than boots - not the best footwear for a taipan chase in dense vegetation. After a short dash up and over a hill I found Owen and Julious in the bottom of a creek, a 1.9 m Papuan taipan (Oxyuranus scutellatus canni) held firmly in Owen's M1 tongs, although it was Julious who had caught it. The snake was returned to the vehicles and bagged, not a bad start to the day, made more interesting when Jasper returned from up the road to say he had missed a taipan which had pulled its tail out of his tongs and disappeared.

The two vehicles at the creek-stop	Habitat where the taipan was sighted and caught
Julious with his bagged Papuan taipan, Oxyuranus scutellatus canni

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