The Last Snake Man Read online

  ‘Mate,’ I said, ‘we just got back from there.’

  I wondered if he appreciated the distances and I thought his timing was slightly out given the coming wet season, when some roads become unusable. Another problem was that he wanted to tackle the Red Centre. They were coming from Europe, which was cold but had proper roads everywhere, to a huge area where many of the roads were just dirt tracks.

  I was worried for him and Christa. Did they know what they were getting into? Did they realise it could take a week to drive from the Kimberleys to Sydney? I needn’t have worried. Martin fell in love with the outback and even spent an extra day at William Creek, near Lake Eyre in South Australia. On New Year’s Eve he met and became mates with a crusty old bloke who called himself ‘Joe the dingo hunter’, who had no teeth and was out of work. Maybe there was a dingo shortage.

  But what had happened in the intervening years? And why had Martin never replied to the letters I sent him when I was laid up with my broken neck? Martin had carried on with athletics, and at the 1958 European Championships he won the gold in 110-metre hurdles. That year he ran his first world record, in the 4 x 100-metre relay, and the next year he broke the world record in the 110-metre hurdles, which stood until 1972. He also set his personal best in the decathlon and was ranked second in the world. He was the first person to be voted Athlete of the Year in the inaugural edition of the sports magazine Track & Field News.

  Martin ran the anchor leg for West Germany’s 4 x 100-metre relay team that won gold at the 1960 Rome Olympics after the United States team was disqualified for an incorrect baton change. Martin was forced to retire shortly thereafter when a non-sterile injection went bad and he was facing the prospect of losing a leg.

  It turned out, while I was lying in hospital after breaking my neck, he was in hospital too, telling his doctors there was no way they were cutting off his leg. He still has trouble with it now. It got worse for Martin; on her way to visit him in hospital, his girlfriend was killed in a car crash, and his brother died several years later from the injuries he sustained in the same accident.

  After recovering, Martin took up sailing and failed by only a few seconds to qualify for the Olympics. Then, amazingly, he became a country and western singer—cowboy hat, the lot—recording albums with the songs in German on one side and English on the other. Someone liked them—he sold millions. About ten years after their trip to Australia, Martin paid for Helen and me to fly to Germany—proof, if any were needed, that his determination, intelligence and competitive spirit had paid off for him, big time.

  In his collection of memorabilia, he had an Australian athlete’s track singlet and he didn’t know who it belonged to, although he suspected it might have been Peter Hatfield’s. Peter competed for Australia in the decathlon in the 1960 Olympics and Martin wanted me bring it back to Australia and return it to him. The thing was, I recognised the number—it was mine, although I didn’t let on. After a few beers one day we had a mini-decathlon in his backyard and I wore my singlet (which seemed to have shrunk over the years).

  While we were there Knut Tasker told me he was writing a book about Martin and asken me if I’d like to contribute something. Not long after we got home, Knut phoned and asked me to send the piece to him but not tell Martin what I was doing. In it, I told the story of how we’d met and reconnected years later, and revealed for the first time who that singlet really belonged to.

  A few months later I got a parcel from Germany containing a signed copy of the book. In the dedication, Martin had written, ‘Hi mate, am I the mug now?’

  That phone call out of the blue was the start of a friendship that lasts to this day. Helen and I have travelled many times with Martin and Christa, both here and in Europe. And during the Sydney Olympics, he brought a steady stream of visiting athletes out to Yarra Road to enjoy some good old-fashioned Australian hospitality. Remarkably, Martin calls me at 4 p.m. every day, just to say hi and check that I’m okay. More than 50 years after the event, our friendship is as strong as ever.

  On one of our trips to Germany in 2009, Martin and Christa took Helen and me to that same restaurant in Hamelin George had visited with his army mates back in the 1940s. We arrived in Hamelin on a charter boat that Martin skippered on the Weser River for a week. I’d brought George’s 50-year-old menu with me and I was pleasantly surprised when I saw a display case at the entrance with artefacts and a history of the place. The menu would have fitted right in there.

  The waitress sat us down in the very alcove depicted on page four of the old menu, and we were given a new menu, which was just as impressive. Martin told the waitress in German that we’d like to speak to the manager. We were going to show him the old menu. She returned and said that he was busy but he’d come to see us shortly. During our meal and drinks over the next two hours, Martin asked twice more, but the manager never came. So we left with the old menu and a copy of the new one, and they missed out on seeing a bit of their own history.

  One trip in Germany was an adventure of a different kind. We flew into Frankfurt and then had to catch a train to Milan, where Martin was waiting for us. His daughter met us and put us on the train, where we got into a compartment with a nice-looking young woman. Before we left, Martin’s daughter spoke to her in German (although it turned out she spoke perfect English, with a slight American accent). We had to change trains in Mannheim for a connection through Switzerland to Italy.

  It was one of those compartment trains with the corridor down one side and sliding doors opening to two bench seats facing each other. I was exhausted from the flight so I stretched out on one seat and slept while Helen and the young woman chatted away. The next thing I knew, Helen and the girl were shaking me: ‘Wake up! Wake up!’ Helen said. ‘This is where we get off.’

  So we grabbed our bags and crossed the platform to the other train and settled down for the long part of the journey. Eventually, a bloke in uniform came in and asked to see our passports. That seemed odd, given we were still in Germany, but whatever…I felt in my pocket. No passport. I told Helen she must have the passports and she checked in her bag for the big travel wallet that had our passports, plane tickets and $5000 in cash in it. Gone! The nice girl who was so helpful had robbed us. In fact, as soon as I dozed off, first chance she got she must have sprayed Helen with gas to make her sleep too.

  The railway police came in and we described everything that had happened and they just nodded, like they knew it already (which I suppose they did). Helen was able to give them a detailed description of the woman and they phoned head to get the train searched at the next station while we got off the Milan train and waited. After a couple of hours a German copper arrived on a train going back the other way.

  ‘She must have liked you,’ he said. ‘We found your wallet in the toilet. Normally they just throw it out of the window.’

  Sure enough, the tickets and passports were all there, but the money was gone. The girl had struck gold with us. At least now we could continue our journey, several hours late and with no money. We searched our pockets for any spare cash we might have but all I could find was one $5 note. I had to push my way—politely—to the front of the bureau de change queue just to change one lousy fiver before the next train went. But at least it got us a cup of tea and a sandwich to share.

  Martin had been alerted at this stage and his daughter, who worked high up in a bank, arranged for more cash to be waiting for us in Milan. Luckily, I’d just sold a lot of pictures to an author who was writing a book about turtles, so we were able to get the money transferred and we had a couple of thousand dollars to spend.

  Martin had hired a cabin cruiser in Venice, so we spent a wonderful time there and soon forgot about our ordeal on the train…almost. We were lucky—our friendship with Martin and Christa restored our faith in human nature, which had been so cruelly shattered. And, hey, isn’t that what friends are for?

  CHAPTER 23

  REPTILES AND REPROBATES

  You wouldn’t
normally associate collecting reptiles with crime but, sadly, there’s a thriving black-market trade in snakes, turtles and lizards, both for local collectors and to be sent overseas. This has been brought home to us directly over the years when we’ve had a few snakes and turtles stolen. In fact, it still goes on. I recently had problems with someone trying to net the last of my turtles. I didn’t catch the thieves but they lost their net down in the pond, which is how I discovered the intrusion had occurred.

  Quite a few years ago, two brothers came to the house. Their name was Nicol and they wanted to buy some little turtles from us. They went to George’s place first and he brought them to me, but I said, ‘I’m not selling turtles and no, I’m not breeding them.’ They certainly dressed the part, with army fatigues on and really good high boots. I commented on this.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ one of them said. ‘They’re good for walking in the bush.’

  Away they went, but I was a bit suspicious of them and so was George. We went back down to George’s place, two doors away, and his wife, Moira, said: ‘I don’t know who those blokes were but they bought a couple of George’s lizards.’

  George and I went out with them while they put the lizards in their car and we saw cane cages in there. They had a few animals in them that they must have bought somewhere else.

  ‘That’s an unusual sort of a cage,’ George said, but the bloke didn’t comment.

  A couple of weeks later, it was coming up to Christmas Eve when I discovered all my rare turtles had been knocked off from the hot room at the back of the house. There was no back fence at the time and there’d been a lot of rain, so there were clear footprints, including distinctive patterns from the same boots in two different sizes.

  ‘That’s them, the bastards,’ I said.

  Unbeknown to us, Moira had written their rego plate number down and, through a mate who’d sold specimens to a couple of blokes fitting their description, we tracked them down to where they lived in Bondi. We told the cops about them, and they were interested, apart from one smartarse mug detective.

  ‘There’s a man here says his turtle’s been stolen,’ he was singing out to all his mates. ‘His little pet turtle’s been stolen.’

  These were specimens I had brought down from the Gulf Country and this ignorant copper was geeing me up. I thought, ‘If we weren’t in a police station, I’d show you “pet turtle”, all right.’

  The coppers weren’t going to do anything right away, so George and I went to the address and knocked on the door. This bloke opened up and, sure enough, it was the two Nicol brothers. They argued with us but I could see they had a couple of our snakes, including some little pythons, there—but no turtles. We didn’t realise at the time that the turtles were in a garage in units nearby in little ponds and tanks, but they weren’t about to give them up.

  ‘Well, we’ve been to the police and we know who you are and where you live,’ I said. ‘You tell me where the turtles are and we’ll drop the charges.’

  ‘Tell them f…n nothing,’ the older brother said.

  But the younger bloke said he’d tell us if we did agree to drop the charges. So I got all my turtles back. True to my word, I went back to the coppers with George and I told them we wanted to drop the charges.

  ‘Okay, I’ll drop the charges,’ the detective said. ‘But I’ve done a lot of paperwork about this and if you drop the charges, don’t ever come back here in the future asking us for help with anything else.’

  ‘Well, I never made any agreement,’ George said. ‘I’ll charge them.’

  So they were arrested and released on bail. One of them shot through; the other brother went to court, was found guilty and did six months in jail. It turned out they were notorious big-time animal smugglers and even made it into Raymond Hoser’s book Smuggled about the illegal trade in reptiles, birds and other animals. It seems they were still doing it, even after one had been jailed and the other jumped bail. In fact, I’m told that John Nicol, the bail jumper, had travelled in and out of the country several times—so much for Border Security.

  The Nicols were the most notorious animal traffickers we came across, but they weren’t the worst criminals we encountered, not by a long shot. Back in the mid-1960s we were getting a few reptiles stolen and never had a clue who it was. Some good lizards went from George’s yard so we asked around and some local youngsters said they knew where we could find the kids who’d knocked off our lizards. They said it was the Murphy boys who lived nearby, in Hastings Avenue, Chifley. So George and I went to their house. The boys were only young—one of them was about thirteen and the others about six and eight—and we said straight off that we knew they had our lizards and we wanted them back.

  Well, you wouldn’t believe the foul-mouthed abuse we got from these kids. They were cursing and swearing, screaming at us, like they were out of control. Then their grandmother came out and she was even worse than them with her obscene and aggressive curses and threats.

  ‘I think we’ll drop this, George,’ I said. ‘No lizard is worth all this.’ So we told them we’d better not catch them near our place or there’d be trouble and we walked away.

  ‘You know, those kids scared me,’ I said to George when we got to the corner.

  ‘Me too,’ he said.

  Twenty years later those kids became better known as the Murphy boys who abducted, raped and murdered Anita Cobby.

  Our properties opened straight on to the bush so we were always a bit vulnerable to thieves and I eventually had to fit alarms to the snake and reptile houses. But I recall Pop telling me about a bunch of blokes running an illegal two-up game that had been raided by the cops and ran for it with the cops on their heels, running through backyards and gardens. One of them got to our place and saw a wall and thought it would be handy to hide behind. So over he goes and drops down into a snake pit with maybe 200 or so snakes in it. He screams like a banshee and takes off, hurdling the garden fences like an Olympic athlete. I doubt the police ever caught him.

  One brush with lawlessness has nothing to do with snakes or turtles but still sends a shiver down my spine. Around Christmas 1977, I’d gone on a diving trip with my mate Trevor Allen. We used to call Trevor ‘Saltwater Cecil’ because he made his money out of selling sea water to aquariums. Trevor had a good business, especially when restaurants started installing lobster tanks.

  Once he was called in by the Blue Angel restaurant in East Sydney, down from Kings Cross, which was a pretty notorious area back in the day. Their lobsters were dying and they couldn’t keep them alive. Trevor supplied the water to them and he worked out what the trouble was right away. He rigged up refrigerators under the tanks and pumped chilled water into them to keep the temperature down. When the water was cold the lobsters survived for a long time.

  Trevor was one of the first to supply salt water for aquariums. He lived at Botany and he used to get his water off Bare Island using plastic drums, pipes and pumps. He’d just park his wagon there and draw the water out where it was clearest. At least, he did until a National Parks bloke came along one day.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said the ranger.

  ‘I’m getting salt water,’ Trevor replied.

  ‘You can’t take salt water from here,’ the ranger replied. ‘This is a Marine National Park.’

  I can’t believe that. It’s not like there’s a water shortage in the ocean!

  But I digress. I was down at Trevor’s holiday place near Jervis Bay and he asked me if I wanted to go line fishing one night. I was never a keen line fisherman, but I’d done it and it was all right. Out we went through Murrays Beach, where there’s a good ramp—and where in 1969 the idiot federal government proposed building a nuclear power station! Thank the lord they changed their mind, because Jervis Bay is one of the prettiest parts of Australia.

  We put the boat in and headed out between Bowen Island and Governors Head, heading south. We went around two points but the wind was blowing pretty strongly and it wasn’t comfortable, s
o we pulled into a little cove and stopped in close to the cliff. We dropped anchor and got the line in, sitting nice and quiet, hardly talking.

  We were only there for a few minutes when we spotted a big freighter of some sort heading north. We were just sitting there watching it, and the next thing we saw some flashes of light from the ship, like from a signalling lamp. Flash, flash, flash—nothing more.

  ‘Trevor, what the friggin hell is that?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied.

  Immediately a big bloody powerful motorboat kicked over just around the bend from where we were. It flew out, full bore, towards the ship.

  ‘Let’s friggin get out of here,’ I said to Trevor, and he didn’t need any persuasion.

  We got back around to the boat ramp as fast as we could. There was at least one other car there, and a trailer, may be two cars—we didn’t hang around to check. That’s the last time we ever went fishing at night. That definitely had to be a drug pick-up. Remember, there were no mobile phones back then and by the time we’d got back to Trevor’s and called the cops and they’d come from wherever they were based, there wasn’t much point so we just let it go. The blokes in the powerboat would have been long gone.

  But it all came back to me a few months later, on 23 September 1978, to be exact, when the Olympic swimmer Gary Chapman and his mate Ron Nelson disappeared on a fishing trip. They’d sailed out of Sylvania, heading for a fishing ground 15 kilometres off Maroubra. Their boat was found, capsized, the next day at Little Bay, with no sign of either of them.

  Gary and I were friends. I’d come fourth to him in a swimming heat in the New South Wales School Championships. A couple of months later, Gary came third to me in the hurdles. We were good mates and hung out together at the Melbourne Olympics.