Siding Spring Update
Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue48 1–29 February 2024
As part of the College of Science internship program, SSO is hosting 4 interns. The interns will spend three weeks at SSO, where they will get to see how an observatory works and do a couple of projects.
The four interns are working on WiFeS data, analysing how stable the calibration data are and using the acquisition images to measure seeing and atmospheric transparency
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WATCH YOUR STEP by Tom Woodrow
I started working at SSO, as a technician, in mid-2023 and have enjoyed some of the unique experiences you have working at the observatory, such as: sunset over the Warrumbungles from the catwalk of the AAT dome, watching the massive telescope move gracefully and precisely and seeing light collected from galaxies millions of light years away appear on computer monitors in amazing detail.
A few weeks ago, though, I had an experience I wasn't expecting to have. I had driven about 30 minutes southeast of Coonabarabran, just outside the town of Binnaway, to meet my wife, Nicole, who was driving up from Sydney. It was around 6.30 pm, a time when the kangaroos were plentiful, and I was going to escort her as she did not have a bull bar on her car.
I pulled onto the side of the road off the edge, on a gravel patch with a few tufts of grass. After waiting a couple of minutes Nicole drove up and parked just ahead of me. I got out of the car to say hello. On immediately stepping out of the car I felt a bite on the inside arch of my right foot. Not particularly painful, a bee sting is much worse. Looked down and saw the tail of what looked to be the tail of a fairly small, thin snake, olive colour, disappearing under the car. I could see the puncture wounds, just small pinpricks. I was wearing shorts and thongs as I hadn't expected to be anywhere particularly 'snakey'. I walked over to Nicole and said, ‘I think I just got bitten by a snake’.
We had a quick look in our cars for compression bandages, which we have had in various cars at various times but could not find any. I grabbed a sheet from the back of my car and wrapped my leg up in that, no doubt totally ineffective. I was aware that in the majority of snakebites, no venom is injected so I thought chances are I am OK but we are less than 30 minutes from a hospital, so we should just go there as quickly as possible in case it was worse than I thought. I really didn't feel like waiting around for an ambulance that might take who knows how long to get there. Mistakenly, I also thought that if I had been envenomated, that the bite would be more painful and I would be feeling some other symptoms.
Stupidly, I decided to take both cars, because I didn't want to have to come back and get it later, right! I should have sat in the back of the car immobile while Nicole drove us there. I felt fine on the drive, my foot started to hurt a little driving into the hospital grounds. Nicole went in to get help, came back and said we'll just move the car to another spot closer to the doors. I tried to re-position in my seat a little and just felt too lethargic to move. I said to Nicole that she better just grab some people to get me. During that time, I could feel myself slowly fading out, no pain, no difficulty breathing, could feel my heart racing a bit, and just passed out.
A nurse came out and found me unconscious, my head had fallen forward and I wasn't breathing. He got me out of the car onto the ground and sorted out my airway. Nicole was running through the hospital grabbing a trolley and extra bodies. Some young bloke driving past (Kyle, who I have since shouted a meal at the pub!) saw the commotion and stopped and ended up holding my head in the correct position whilst help and a trolley was on the way etc.
After I had been stabilised outside, the staff got me into the hospital and the priority was to get the anti-venom into me. The local nurses and doctor were amazing and they also got direction from Dubbo Hospital over an audio-visual link.
Because we had not positively identified the snake, they needed to give me the polyvalent antivenom which deals with most types of snakes. Due to recent health department policy it had been decided that Coonabarabran hospital didn't need to have this type of antivenom, as the further west you get in NSW, the brown snake becomes the major venomous species, and they just stock antivenom for that type and a few other species. However, it is debatable if Coonabarabran is far enough west to exclude other types. It turned out they had one out-of-date vial which they were going to give to the vet to use for dogs, I got that one. No complaints from my side, I wasn't in a position to be choosy! The case has been taken up to have the polyvalent AV restocked in places like Coonabarabran. Having said that, my subsequent blood results pointed to the venom being from a brown snake.
I don't recall for about an hour after I passed out, came to and did not feel well at all. It had already been decided to get me to Dubbo hospital in case of any further complications, so the RFDS came out and picked me up. I gradually started to feel better over the next few hours and it was rest and recovery after that.
I can't say enough thanks to all the medical staff involved and of course Nicole, who was rock solid throughout. I have been to the hospital to track down those involved and have personally thanked some of them.
From my crash course in snakebites, I have learnt that there are two main types of snake venom: neurotoxin (the paralysing type) and hemotoxin (blood poisoning type). Snakes usually carry some combination of the two but one is generally dominant.
Brown snake venom is mainly a hemotoxin, amongst other things this one causes dilation of the blood vessels and you suffer loss of blood pressure, causing the passing out. In my case, it looks like the blood chemistry was so affected, even in an ambulance/hospital they couldn't have kept me alive for long without the anti-venom, as a lot of body systems were on the verge of shutting down.
Whilst we made the decision to get to the hospital ourselves (and some doctors commented, that in this case, this was a life saver), the recommended advice is to bandage up and stay as immobile as possible whilst waiting for an ambulance e.g. https://stjohnnsw.com.au/guides-snake-bite.
If you feel the need to buy a compression bandage after reading this, there are ones available now that have an indicator on them that lets you know when you have applied the right tension, which is critical for them to be effective. Studies have shown that in less than half of snakebite cases are compression bandages correctly applied.
I find myself watching carefully where I step at the moment!
Chris Lidman and Tom Woodrow on behalf of the SSO team
Image: A picture of Tom being loaded into the Royal Flying Doctor Service plane at Coonabarabran airport.
