When the outback bites back: Eddie's story

For Eddie McKinney, what began as a dream holiday to Uluru with his wife Carmen and their two-year-old daughter Vienna, turned into a freak incident and a desperate call to the RFDS.

In the Easter of 2022, the McKinneys had travelled from Melbourne to Central Australia to celebrate both Eddie and Carmen’s birthdays, which are a week apart.

Originally from the United States, Eddie had been eager to explore the Red Centre.

“Uluru was always top of the bucket list,” Eddie said.

“Seeing it for the first time was surreal. It’s such a spiritual place, especially with the desert sunsets.”

On their second day, things took an unexpected turn.

After lunch, as the outback heat climbed beyond 30 degrees, Eddie decided to take Vienna down to the hotel pool. “I thought it was just a piece of like grass, or something random, but it felt a little squiggly,” he said.

“I looked down and saw a brown snake fly off my leg.

“We just looked at each other for a second – me and the snake – and then it took off.”

Eddie, still trying to process what had happened, quickly returned to the room to alert Carmen.

“I’m like, ‘I’m dead serious. It was a brown snake.’ We even Googled it to confirm,” he said.

“So, we’re checking my leg and no bites. Nothing. I just thought I’m the luckiest man in the world.”

But at the pool, about 10 minutes later, that luck began to shift.

“I thought I’d gotten away with it,” Eddie said.

Despite the panic, shock and heat, Eddie did what years of watching Australian documentaries on snake bites had taught him. He created a torniquet, wrapping a pool towel as tightly as possible around his leg. He collapsed on the floor of the resort’s restaurant and yelled:

“Help! I’ve been bitten by a brown snake!”

A fellow guest, Jules, quickly sprang into action, instructing staff on first aid while an ambulance was called to take Eddie to the nearby Yulara Health Clinic.

The nurses at the clinic contacted the Medical Retrieval & Consultation Centre (MRaCC) at Alice Springs Hospital to coordinate an RFDS response.

“They told me, ‘We’ll have to call the RFDS to get you to Alice Springs.’”

With a pressure bandage on his leg and no idea if venom had entered his system, the wait was difficult for Eddie and Carmen.

“My wife was obviously very panicked at first. She had been with Vienna, crying by the pool thinking I was going to die,” Eddie said.

“Meanwhile, I was in the clinic just trying not to move, hoping for the best.”

Eddie was airlifted to Alice Springs aboard an aeromedically equipped RFDS PC-12 aircraft, in the care of an MRaCC Doctor and RFDS Flight Nurse.

“I remember saying goodbye to the family was tough because I didn’t know what was going to happen,” Eddie said.

“But the RFDS were just amazing from beginning to end. They just made me feel comfortable – my wife feel comfortable.

“It’s an incredible setup they have in such a small, confined space. It’s like being in an operating room with wings.”

Later, at the hospital in Alice Springs, doctors discovered not one, but two bite marks, with one hidden on the back of Eddie’s calf.

But in a remarkable stroke of luck, both were determined to be ‘dry bites’, meaning no venom had been injected.

Eddie’s grandmother, a lifelong health worker, is a huge fan of the RFDS TV series, watching it religiously from her home in America.

“She tells me all the time – she wishes a service like this existed in the States,” he said. “If you’re going to get bitten by a brown snake, do it in Australia. And make sure the RFDS is around.

“You never know who you’re going to be helping – maybe someone just like me, who went on a dream holiday and ended up needing heroes in the sky.”