© Facebook/StormingAustraliaFormer soldier Scott Loxley in his Stormtrooper costume and a king brown snake
An Australian man who is trekking across the country for charity has been saved from a potentially deadly snake bite - by his Imperial Stormtrooper costume.
Australian media report that Scott Loxley, who has so far raised $40,000 (£24,000) for the Monash children's hospital in Victoria, encountered a King Brown snake on day 277 of his epic 'Storming Australia' walk as he was leaving the small town of Yalboroo in Queensland.
Mr Loxley initially thought the viper was dead and went to walk past it when it began to move and lunged to bite him on the shin.
In video on his Facebook page, he said that he had been saved from the snake's toxic venom by his plastic Stormtrooper armour:
Turns out it wasn't dead; It was a big old King Brown.
And he's lunged at me and bit me in the shin.
- Scot Loxley
'The armour actually protected me and stopped the bite," Mr Loxley said, laughing in his video.
"I could feel the teeth on the plastic, scraping, but the armour actually stopped something."
"So all those people who rag on the old Stormtroopers - 'you know, the armour doesn't do this, it doesn't do that' - it stopped the snake bite and probably saved my life today." - Mr Loxley said, in a defence of the high death-rate of Imperial Stormtroopers in the fictional Star Wars universe.
© Scott Loxley/FacebookScott Loxley hopes to raise $100,000 for the Monash Children's hospital in Victoria, Australia.
Loxley has been travelling through Queensland since December, after making the long journey through Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, and across northern Australia.
He hopes to raise $100,000 (£540,000) for the Monash children's hospital by the end of his 'Storming Australia' trip.
Reader Comments
May he slay many jedi in the coming years.
There are no vipers in Australia, except perhaps in zoo snake houses.
...I thought -everything- in Australia was venomous...;)
and be 'protected' from the venom of the snake