Scott Loxley is walking around Australia for charity in stormtrooper armour. As you do. He's trying to save children's lives by raising money for the Monash children's Hospital, but he never thought the armour would save his own life.
The force to raise money is strong in this one. Source: NewsComAu
THIS is a story about a man whose stormtrooper outfit just saved him from almost certain death after being bitten by one of the world's deadliest snakes.
Yes, that really happened. So did a bunch of other stuff. We're going to do this in a list of 20 points to help make sense of it all.
1. Scott Loxley is a man.
2. Scott Loxley is not just any man. Scott Loxley is a former soldier and military policeman who is currently walking around Australia to raise money for the Monash Children's Hospital in Melbourne.
3. Charity walk. Yawn, right?
4. Wrong. Not yawn. Not even slightly yawn.
5. Here's why. Scott Loxley's lap of Australia is different to most others because he's wearing a stormtrooper suit the whole way. Uh-huh.
You meet all sorts of people out there on the highways of Australia. Source: News Corp Australia
6. News.com.au asked Scott if he's a mad Star Wars nerd or something (we're not the first to ask) and he said nope.
"The stormtrooper is an awesome advertising device," he said. "No matter where I go, everyone knows who he is."
Which kind of explains everything and nothing, but anyway.
7. We also asked Scott if the suit is hot, given he's currently in central Queensland after crossing Australia's tropical north over summer. Unsurprisingly, Scott said: "yes".
"The heat and humidity have made every day almost unbearable, to the point where I wake up and go 'I can't put it on today'," he said.
"But if I don't, I won't finish. So every day I put on the armour and off I go."
8. Scott walks 50 to 75km every day, by the way. He started in Melbourne in September and will end up there again in June, all going to plan. He says he can't wait for the cooler weather to arrive as the sun has melted and cracked the stormtrooper outfit and it's pretty much held together with sticky tape.
Trucks the size of the Death Star don't bother him at all. Source: News Corp Australia
9. Now for the bit you're waiting for. Yesterday, Scott was walking down the Bruce Highway between the tiny towns of Yalboroo and Calen. Towards dusk, he saw a snake. This in itself was nothing unusual. Scott has seen, and killed, and even eaten, plenty of snakes on his trip. But this time something different happened. Here's how he described the incident on the daily video blog he's uploading to Facebook each day from his iPad.
"Coming out of Yalboroo, across a bridge, heading up a bit of a hill, and as you do you see snakes on the road all the time but mainly dead snakes, and I'm walking up the hill and I see a snake on the side of the road and I think oh here's another dead snake, I'll just continue to walk past him. Turns out he wasn't dead, big old king brown, they love the cane fields up here, and he's lunged at me and bit me. But the good news is, he bit me in the shin, the armour actually protected me and stopped the bite. I could feel the teeth on the plastic scraping but the armour actually stopped something, so all the people who rag on the old stormtroopers, it stopped the snakebite and probably saved my life today. So yeah today's a good day and I'm pretty happy. That's the first time today a snake actually bit me and got away with it. Yeah, couldn't catch him, he was pretty aggressive and took off through the grass. I wasn't about to go after him."
10. Yes, that's right, his stormtrooper armour saved his life.
"Normally when you get bitten you feel a hot sensation, a burning," Scott told news.com.au. "But I looked down and saw scratched marks on the armour and realised it hadn't pierced it.
"I laughed at that point. I said 'snake, you had one shot and you blew it'."
Don't you know it's rude to poke your tongue out, snakey? Source: News Limited
11. This point on the list has no purpose except to give you more time to take in the previous point.
12. OK, so you've had a breather. Now you're probably wondering, wait a minute, this dude eats snakes???? Yes, he does. And that's just the beginning of it.
"I've eaten kangaroos, lizards, snake, a few bats on this trip. Bats taste as terrible as they smell."
Er, we bet they do Scott.
13. "Snakes aren't so bad," Scott continued. "I've eaten them all the way around the country. Normally of an evening they gravitate towards the road because the road retains its heat. I catch them by standing on them and holding their head, then I keep them alive by cable-tying them to a stick because they taste better when they're fresh."
Yes, of course they do.
14. Oh, and in case you're wondering, Scott says there's not much difference in taste between snake species. "I just cook 'em on the coals. The death adders taste the same as a brown snake," he helpfully explained.
15. We didn't ask a snake if all stormtrooper armour tastes the same, but we probably should have.
We found this pic of a king brown snake stuck in a VB can in our pic library and couldn't resist running it. Photos supplied by Alice Springs Reptile Centre. Source: Supplied
16. Scott's eating habits are actually rather unusual. He only eats every second day on his trip and drinks just 600 ml of water a day, which doesn't sound like much to us in the tropical heat, but Scott said it's enough for him.
Forget paleo or the through-a-straw diet. Australia, we give you the Scott Loxley diet. Coming soon to a hipster cafe near you.
17. What else can we tell you? Not much, except to say was munching on a hamburger at a hotel in the small town of Kuttabul, when we spoke. No, it wasn't a snake burger. Oh yeah, and he pushes a little trolley to keep all his essentials in. It kind of looks a bit like a pram.
18. Also, Scott wears shoes out really quickly and says it doesn't matter whether they're $300 shoes or cheapies, the rubber goes just as quickly. But he's solving this problem by using bits of truck tyre as re-treads.
19. Perhaps the most important thing we can do at this point is to wish Scott well, and encourage you to donate to his very worthy cause, the Monash Children's Hospital. You can do that here. Scott still needs around $60,000 or so to get to his goal of $100k.
You can also follow his journey on Facebook here.
20. Onya Scotty! And may the force be with you.
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