Snake exhibitions have been a feature at La Perouse since the early 1900s. For well over a century, one of Sydney’s most enduring traditions has played out on the foreshore at the northern entrance to Botany Bay — a grassy pit surrounded by corrugated steel just a metre high, where a snake handler brings out some of Australia’s most dangerous reptiles for anyone who cares to stop and watch.

“Professor” Fred Fox was the first of the famous snake men, setting a tradition for showmanship which continued over the years. Fox was determined to gain recognition for his snake bite antidote, demonstrating it around the globe — until a krait bite in Calcutta in 1914 left him dead within hours.

When Fox died, George Cann — a legendary collector of Sydney-dwelling snakes — took on the show. The exhibition remained in the Cann family right up until 2010. George Cann Senior was already performing his routine with some of Australia’s most deadly reptiles when his son John was born at La Perouse in 1938. John Cann would go on to become one of the most recognised figures in Australian herpetology — receiving the Medal of the Order of Australia in 1992 for services to the community, helping Steve Irwin verify a new species of turtle in 1997, and carrying the Olympic torch during the Sydney 2000 relay. Randwick City Council later renamed the park in his honour — today it is known as Cann Park.

In 2010, volunteers from the Hawkesbury Herpetological Society took over the running of the show, with Robert G. Ambrose among those who stepped into the role. Rob’s earliest childhood memories are of sitting beside his grandfather watching the snake pit demonstrations at La Perouse. Decades later, he now finds himself standing in the very same pit, continuing a tradition that stretches back more than 100 years.

Every Sunday and public holiday, you’ll find Rob continuing the tradition at La Perouse as part of his work with Western Sydney Snake Catcher. In many ways he represents a direct link to the old-style Australian snake men — practical, knowledgeable, entertaining, and completely at ease handling some of the country’s most dangerous reptiles in front of a live crowd. Tiger snakes, brown snakes, red-bellied black snakes, pythons and lizards are all brought out as Rob mixes education, conservation and dry humour in a way that keeps the crowd engaged from start to finish.

The pit remains refreshingly unchanged in an age of online bookings and ticketed attractions. It is free to attend. No barriers, no reservations, no theatre lighting — just a snake handler, his reptiles, and a crowd of curious onlookers gathered around a low steel fence beside the water.
And somehow, more than a century later, it still works.

Catch the La Perouse Snake Pit every Sunday and public holiday from 1.30pm at Cann Park, La Perouse.