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MichaelR said..obct said..This is as close as I ever knowingly got to a venomous one, I think it was a black snake back in around 1973.
Don't know how long it had its head caught inside that can, but either side of its neck was really cut up bad, we could not believe it was still alive, maybe it wasn't, maybe it was just his nerves still going.
Funny how things change over the years, back then we thought the best thing we could do was put it out of its misery , these days we would be trying to find a shelter or a vet to take it to.
Jeez, is that really you? You're looking like a young Harry Butler! At that time, he'd have dispatched that poor fella and cooked 'im up for supper..... You're also looking like you could do with a feed..... you're a shadow of your future self......

Yes, taken out at Londonderry by my mate Dave, that's where we would go to ride dirt bikes, it was just low scrubby bush back then with a lot of burnt out cars. I even recall the burnt out shell of a Mercedes 600. Probably all houses now.
That was a good example of the old Keep It Simple Stupid philosophy. The same thing may have have happened to others here.
Dave was a mower and bicycle mechanic who worked out of a small shop in Cabramatta, he had unlimited access to old mower motors. His shop also started selling these cheap knock down kits for mini bikes for just $40 each.
They were easy to put together, and they had no suspension at all , the wheels were tiny, maybe only 8 inches total diameter, and the kit even came with the centrifugal clutch.
So we got a couple, put them together and put a 2 stroke motor in each. Dave used a victa, I used a villiers. we got rid of all the cooling tin and the starters and we didn't even bother to install the foot pegs because they would stop you from really cranking is over in the turns. We just tucked our feet on top of the double cradle frame members.
To start the bikes, we both carried a rawhide starter cord wrapped around our necks as we rode.
Safety gear was as per the photo, a pair of steal capped work boots, a pair of jeans and a long sleeved shirt.
we would carve out little tracks for ourselves, and spend hour after hour racing each other, eating dust an rocks, trying to kick each other off the bike, or better still, over the bank of a creek, and all the while wearing the biggest grins in the world.
That lasted maybe year before we both started to get proper dirt bikes, join clubs, start competing in enduros go on long trail rides, I even finished up riding observed trials on a TY 175 because it would hurt less when I crashed, which I did quite often.
Now here's the KISS part, looking back on those days, i can in all honesty say that the most fun was the $40 mini bikes, and not by a whisker, I mean by a mile.