What is the snake presence in Mount Eliza - likely, unlikely ?

Hi,

My Dad has lived in Mount Eliza for 8 years and has never seen any species of snake here; he is also a very outdoors person so has a higher likelihood of seeing them if they are about. I would say the snake presence is very low, especially in the residential areas. There is a bit of remnant bushland scattered here and there and naturally these areas would be somewhat more likely to have some native animals, such as snakes. He does see the odd blue tongue lizard which is a lovely little pretty harmless lizard!

It seems there is a general impression of Australia as being absolutely covered with snakes and that we routinely are bitten, however if you look at the statistics there seems to be a much higher chance of an encounter with a vehicle accident, a bee sting reaction or being struck by lightening rather than a snakebite. I myself now live in North Central Victoria and as such encounter snakes much more often as we are on a rural acerage property. Even still, we seem to see only about 2 - 3 snakes per year on our walks even up here, and even when I nearly stood on one it simply slithered away to get away from me as fast as possible and made no attempt to come near me at all.
Snakes generally inhabit areas where there are higher populations of their food source such as mice (such as near chicken pens and rubbish tips), and frogs (such as near dams).

I hope you enjoy your relocation. Mount Eliza is an upmarket boutique town which is very friendly, with a lovely sociable community with weekly farmers markets, and a lovely annual festival. It has pleasant surroundings, a couple of cute playgrounds, close proximity to shopping local and further afield and beautiful weekend drives to a variety of beaches, rural locations, wineries and the like, very close to lovely beaches and close enough to Melbourne to commute to work on train via Frankston or to drive. Other towns close to Mount Eliza that are lovely to visit are Mount Martha and Mornington. Frankston has a lot of handy infrastructure, and good beach bicycle track and playground, although I would not recommend Frankston itself to live directly in.

I have put a link here to some snake bite statistics to put your mind at ease before your relocation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_snake_bites_in_Australia
also, if you look at the graph at the bottom of this website you will see there is more chance of dying from snakebite in USA http://members.iinet.net.au/~bush/myth.html
and another webpage with some interesting statistics, although relating more to the red belly black snake (much lower venom than the others) http://www.wiresnr.org/redbellyblack.html

Good luck with the relocation!

Mount Eliza is a lovely pace to live with no dangerous wildlife. It is literally on the fringe of the city and therefore has nothing uncommon in the area. Generally, the suburb is incredibly safe and attracts plenty of young families.