For as long as I have been in Australia I have always wanted to see a Carpet Python. Most bush walks go through amazing country, the kind of place reminding you of the garden of Eden, unspoilt, serene and beautiful. I have a habit that at the start of almost any of these walks I see the image of a Carpet Python winding itself around the branch of a tree, just as in those biblical images. After many years of walking with this idea in the back of my mind I never really thought I would have the privilege of  actually seeing one. Until yesterday when we walked part of the Bibbelmun track, a 1000 kilometre long route named after the early aboriginal inhabitants of South-West Australia, signposted by Waugal, the rainbow serpent from Nyungar dreamtime; a Carpet Python…

I caught the first glimpse of this mythical animal when we reached a clearing in the Jarrah woodlands of Beelu National Park. On a stretch of bitumen leading to a deserted airstrip we found this nearly two metres long snake basking in the late morning sun. Not exactly the picture I’d been dreaming of for so long, but still, it was a Carpet Python, and we were seeing it! As we came closer the snake slowly started to move into the bush beside the road, winding through the leaf-littered undergrowth and showing off its magnificent camouflaging pattern. I realise that any walk after yesterday’s will never be the same now I have put a huge thick on my bucket-list.