People are lining up for snake parties in Melbourne!

To learn more about how Snake Parties came about, read on ...

In the late 1960's The Snakeman Raymond Hoser invented Snake Parties.
At the time, Hoser weas lampooned as an idiot, but the idea could not be killed.
The name came from the idea of bringing tons of snakes to a kids birthday party, for the children to get hands on and hold them.
These reptile gatherings soon evolved to become full-blown wildlife parties and then the so-called reptile party.
Since then he has registered the trademarks for reptile party and reptile parties in Australia, involving all sorts of critters and in all configurations.
The reptile party trademarks include Snake parties, snake catcher, online information on snakes, wildlife conservation activities, education in schools and so on.

The whole concept of snake parties has travelled a long, long, way since then.
Initially, Raymond Hoser and his reptile collection were a curiosity piece among friends and others who would come to his home to see them. Hoser would take the snakes out of their cages, do a show and tell and let those who wanted to hold them, get hands on.
At the time, Raymond was more into the science of the animals that dealing with other people, but his parents were regularly entertainers of friends and invariably everyone would want to see the animals.
Rather than wait for this to happen, Raymond would simply take the animals to the party, do his show and tell, and then get back to what he had to do.
Typically that was study in one form or other, including what has since become many hundreds of major scientific papers.
From these humble beginnings, the 15 minute "show and tell" with the snakes as the centrepiece expanded and then word-of-mouth did the rest.
The reptile party show extended to an hour or more.
Strangers and other people were more than happy to pay to have Raymond take time out and do what soon became known as the reptile party, or snake parties.
Raymond Hoser's activities were effectively outlawed in the 1970's, as the government-run and owned zoos saw a potential break in their monopoly of the wildlife space.
They wanted people to come to the zoo and spend their money there instead.
The idea of a mobile zoo eating into their lucrative profits was something they had to stop and which they succeeded in.

Raymond Hoser fought against the government's corrupt and dishonest banning of private ownership of wildlife in Australia for two decades and got nowhere.
The enemy in the form of government-run zoos, wildlife officers from the department that owned the zoos were way too powerful and easily withstood the demands of people wanting private ownership of reptiles.
The government run zoos, like Taronga in Sydney and the Melbourne Zoo in Melbourne (known as Zoos Victoria) also had the government controlled media on their sidel.
That was until in 1993, when Raymond Hoser dropped a so-called curve ball and he published the best-selling book, Smuggled: The Underground Trade in Australia's Wildlife.
It exposed the rotten underbelly of the illegal Australian wildlife trade, corruption in State Wildife departments and all the animal abuse and cruelty going on in their own zoos businesses.
True to form the Australian government had the book banned, got police to raid bookshops and seized all copies of the books.
On instructions copies were destroyed and the media that was completely controlled by the state was gagged from reporting the story.

The state controlled media, including the Murdoch Press, who only reports what the government wants them to, refused to report the story of the corruption book that was banned.
Were it not for the corageous efforts of a veteran investigative journalist, Fia Cumming, this story would have gone no further and nothing would have changed.
Employed at the notorious Murdoch owned News Corporation, stories she wrote about corruption were censored and banned (they say spiked in the trade) and her sub-editors, better known as government-assisting censors made sure none of her stories about full-blown corruption ever got printed.
Aware of this, Fia Cumming decided to sabotage the system and get the story of the banning of the book run when the censor wasn't looking.
After planning in line with a covert military operation, her story ran on the front page of all the Murdoch rags on a Sunday in mid 1993, a media frenzy followed and next thing you know, the Australian government through the environment minister at the time (Chris Hartcher) was forced to apologise for the government's fascist behaviour.
He then interviewed on National TV and was forced under duress and effectively kicking and screaming to direct that the book be formally "unbanned".
Police were directed to go back to policing, but as we know, not much that is done, because a lot of cops prefer to deal illicit drugs and do other things that make them more cash.

The book Smuggled:The Underground Trade in Australia's Wildlife went on to become a best seller!
It has been republished many times since and remains an Australian classic more than a quarter of a century after it was published.
It is mandatory reading for all wildlife lovers and those with an interest in entrenched government corruption in Australia.
The bombshell book forced a rewrite of wildlife laws across Australia and for the first time in decades, private people could keep and study native wildlife without getting locked up if caught doing so.
This also meant that privately owned travelling wildlife shows could operate again.
Once it became clear that mobile wildlife displays were legal and those who did them were not going to jail for doing hands on wildlife displays, Raymond Hoser was again able to do his reptile parties.
Seizing on from ideas from others and refining them, the business plan and the nature of the reptile parties changed dramatically.

Instead of owning species that he liked, Raymond Hoser targetted those that were best suited to being handled, ease of looking after and with a wow-factor for audiences at events like kids parties and birthday party shows.
The snake party, sometimes also known as the Kids Reptile Party included crocodiles, snakes, lizards, frogs and turtles, with lots of different kinds and massive numbers at a time, so that even in a group of 30 people, everyone can hold the animals at the same time.
In Melbourne the state of Victoria, Australia, kinders, primary schools, secondary schools and even universities seized on the opportunity to have a mobile zoo come to them and so business boomed for the reptile party shows.
The concept of the travelling wildlife display for kids birthday parties has now been copied across Australia and also elsewhere, including in the UK, USA and even South Africa.
Raymond Hoser taught people in all these places, who now run their own successful wildlife education and reptile display businesses.
In Melbourne, reptile parties are seen most weekends and in pretty much all suburbs of Melbourne and nearby parts of Victoria.
On weekdays when not at schools, kinders and the like, reptile displays can be seen at corporate events and even team building exercises for bored business people.
Occasionally Raymond Hoser will spend the day simply cleaning cages, a neccessary chore that comes with owning animals.
However most fo the time, he does this at night, because, put simply, he is too busy by day to do such things.
Did I mention that Raymond Hoser, better known as the Snakeman is also one of the world's best known wildlife conservation icons.
In terms of actual results, no one on the planet can match his score.
But when it comes to wildlife conservation, Raymond Hoser stresses that everyone needs to be involved for things to work and succeed. He says it is a team game and every person should be a part of the solution.