you'll never see a snake in the civilised parts of Oz
I've never had the pleasure of visiting Australia, but my woman used to live there (1970-1973). She spent 6 months in Sydney and then her father started up an aluminium plant in the Northern Territory (near Nhulunbuy). Now according to her, there were funnel web spiders in the forest nearby, great white sharks spawned in their bay (about 2-3 km away), jellyfish and sea snakes were also in the same bay and buffalo used to graze on their lawn. One day a brown snake (is that the right name? It's one of the top poisonous ones) was curled up on their back porch. Her mother took a broom and shooed it outside whereupon it reared back as if it were going to strike. She then took a shovel and smashed it again and again until it was snake hamburger. She was a real manly woman.
Now, perhaps I'm a wimp but I much prefer living in an environment where the deadliest thing I have to deal with is fire ants and black widow spiders. It's not that I'm scared of snakes, but having one whose bite could kill me in 10 seconds crawl up to my house is just a bit much for this tender foot.