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A Brown Snake that was found in flood waters - Source: ONE News -
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Whack, whack, whack then slice. Off came its head. That's how you kill a deadly snake with a spade in country Victoria.
It was a lethal king brown and the bloke with the spade was a local from the tiny wheat belt town of Warracknabeal, one of the many rural towns in Victoria battling Australia's worst floods in history.
At the time, I was preparing for a live cross into 6pm ONE News.
I was on the bank of a hastily constructed soil levee the residents had built to protect their homes from a bulging creek that had exploded from three to 300 metres wide.
It was the fourth snake kill of the day on this one street alone.
The reptiles had been carried into town by the swirling flood water, unwelcome visitors in an unwelcome inland sea.
Four days ago, I'd flown straight from a wedding in NZ to join TVNZ cameraman Dan in Queensland to cover the aftermath of the deadly floods that swept into Brisbane the week before.
First stop was the Brisbane River, the culprit for much of the destruction.
There I found a large boat that had been picked up and dumped on the sidewalk. Evidence of just how powerful the raging torrent had become.
We used the facilities of TVNZ's affiliate station, ABC, to file a story for the Sunday night news bulletin.
It featured Government Treasurer Wayne Swan saying the floods will be the most expensive natural disaster the country had ever seen.
On Monday morning I met Tony Rowe, an expatriate New Zealander who started an auto glass repair shop near Brisbane 12 years ago.
The water that smashed windscreens around the workshop and swamped the office computers had brought the family business to its knees.
That afternoon, TVNZ HQ directed us to head to country Victoria where towns in the state's north-west regions were also facing devastating floods.
We touched down in Melbourne at 9.30pm on Monday night.
TVNZ satellite operator James Carter travelled from Queensland with us.
James flies with more than 100kg of equipment that can send a video signal to NZ from remote corners of the world.
We stocked up on water and drove north towards Horsham, a town of 15,000 that was facing its worst flood since record began.
Much like the crazy storm chasers who follow tornadoes across the US, we felt like flood chasers - in pursuit of waves of water, kilometres wide sweeping across Victoria.
The road to Horsham was flat and straight. We were admiring the striking mountain range in the Grampians National Park when suddenly three startled Kangaroos bounded out of the bush across the road in front of us - typical rural Australia.
We arrived at Horsham to find the town's gateway had become a waterway as we drove in door-deep in flood water to a media briefing where Victoria's Emergency Services Minister said Horsham was facing a one-in-200 year flooding event.
Dan and I filmed submerged streets and interviewed locals before meeting up with James, who had set up the satellite equipment at a flooded intersection in town.
We sent the vision to TVNZ HQ before Dan and I waded waist deep into the flood water for a live cross into the 6pm news.
With so many media, emergency workers and police in town, accommodation was scarce.
We finally found some $35 a night rooms at a local pub, 1930s hospital-like beds and some rather large blow flies for company.
The next morning, we drove further north to the next town in the path of the wave of water, Warracknabeal, the scene of the snake kill.
The spade certainly came in handy that afternoon and looking back I might think twice about wading waist deep into brown murky flood water in the future.
Cameraman Dan would probably agree.
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