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Snake Season Readiness for Workplaces and Rural Properties: The First Aid Check Every PCBU Should Run Now
Snakes get more active as the weather warms, and across southern Australia that activity runs from spring into autumn. For a business whose workers mow, fence, slash, muster or spend the day away from help, that season is a deadline, not trivia. A general workplace kit is built for the cuts, burns and knocks of an ordinary day and usually carries no wide snake bandage, so snake season workplace first aid is the part of the kit to re-check for any crew working outdoors. Snake season is open now, so this is the week to run the check, before the next warm run of days brings snakes onto your worksites.
This guide is about what an employer needs to have ready before anyone is bitten, not what to do once someone is.
The duty starts before anyone is bitten
Under the model work health and safety laws, a person conducting a business or undertaking, a PCBU, has to provide first aid matched to the actual hazards of the work. Safe Work Australia's First Aid in the Workplace Code of Practice is clear that kit contents follow from a risk assessment, not a generic packing list. If your people work outdoors, in long grass, around water, or a long way from an ambulance, snake bite is a foreseeable hazard and your first aid provision has to account for it. In Victoria the same duty sits with employers under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004, and WorkSafe Victoria's First aid in the workplace compliance code says a remote kit is likely to need two snake bite bandages or elasticised bandages 10 to 15cm wide, and a limb splint.
That makes rural property snake season preparation a duty-holder task, not a nice-to-have. A farm, a council parks crew, a landscaping business, a construction site on a greenfield block: each puts workers in exactly the environments where snakes turn up as the weather warms. The full set of obligations sits in our guide to workplace first aid compliance in Australia, and this article is the snake-specific slice of it.
What should a workplace stock for snake bite first aid?
Stock at least one dedicated snake bite bandage per kit, or two standard elasticised roller bandages if that is what the kit holds, plus a permanent marker and a splint. For remote crews in Victoria, plan on two bandages. ANZCOR Guideline 9.4.8 prefers elasticised bandages 10 to 15cm wide over crepe; the quantities and the marker are our stocking recommendation, not an ANZCOR requirement; the Victorian two comes from WorkSafe Victoria's compliance code.
The bandage is the part people get wrong. ANZCOR Guideline 9.4.8 on the pressure immobilisation technique recommends splinting the limb, prefers elasticised bandages over crepe and notes that elasticised bandages may also improve the pressure obtained, although Safe Work Australia's model Code still lists a heavy duty 10cm crepe bandage for snake bites in its outdoor and remote modules.
A snake bite also needs a lot of bandage, because the technique covers as much of the bitten limb as possible. A dedicated snake bite bandage, long and often printed with a tension indicator, is designed to do that on its own, and ANZCOR 9.4.8 allows a single bandage to give both pressure on the bite site and immobilisation of the limb. Standard rollers are shorter, so if that is what you carry, plan on two: healthdirect's steps use two roller bandages, one over the bite and a second up the limb.
For your pressure immobilisation bandage stock in a general workplace kit, that means one dedicated snake bite bandage per kit as the baseline, or two standard rollers. Victorian remote kits are the exception: plan on two. In Victoria, WorkSafe Victoria's compliance code says a remote kit is likely to need two snake bite bandages or elasticised bandages 10 to 15cm wide.
We are not going to restate the technique here. The application steps belong on the shop floor, in our snake bite first aid kit and how to use it, and that is the page to put in front of workers. This article stays on the stock: what to carry, how much, and how to keep it current.
Snake season workplace first aid as an add-on to the kit
A general workplace first aid kit is built around the cuts, burns and knocks of an ordinary working day, and its bandages are chosen for that job. Snake bite asks more of the kit than that, so for any crew working outdoors, wide elasticised pressure bandages are the seasonal add-on to your workplace first aid kit, not a reason to replace it. Snake season workplace first aid fails at the shelf, not at the scene, when nobody re-matches the kit to the snake hazard.
Match the quantity to the work. A two-person fencing crew an hour from town needs more bandage on hand than a depot with an ambulance ten minutes down the road. Where distance or isolation is the real risk, the kit has to scale up to a remote area kit, and our remote and high-risk workplace kit requirements set out how far.
Whatever kit you start from, count the snake bandages it carries. One dedicated snake bite bandage treats one bite, so a general workplace kit meets the baseline with one, or with two standard rollers if that is what it holds. For remote crews in Victoria, plan on two: WorkSafe Victoria's compliance code says a remote kit is likely to need two snake bite bandages or elasticised bandages 10 to 15cm wide. Every crew should also know that the snake bite first aid kit workplace stock is checked to the same standard as the rest of the kit, not treated as an afterthought once a year.
The snake season kit check
The snake-specific check is short, and it is worth running on its own now the season has opened, separate from the full kit audit:
- Bandage count and width: at least one dedicated snake bite bandage, or two standard elasticised rollers, 10 to 15cm wide, in every general workplace kit that covers outdoor work; two in a Victorian remote kit, because WorkSafe Victoria's compliance code says it is likely to need them.
- Elastic condition and expiry: bandages perish. When kits come back to us for servicing, we check for expired stock and stretched or perished elastic. A bandage that has lost its stretch will not hold pressure as well, and the Code asks that kit items are checked for deterioration and expiry dates.
- Marker present and working: a permanent marker to record the bite site and time on the bandage.
- Splint: a rigid or improvised splint to immobilise the limb.
- Kit locations against where work actually happens, and every worker knowing where the nearest kit is.
For the full audit process, use our workplace first aid kit audit checklist, and for the wider seasonal review across heat, allergens and sun, our spring workplace safety review. This snake check sits inside both, so there is no need to run it twice.
Vehicles, utes and lone workers
A ute is a workplace. Any vehicle used for rural or remote work should carry its own snake bite bandage, because a bite is unlikely to happen next to the shed where the main kit lives. For lone workers, add a communication check: a charged phone or radio, and someone who knows the route and the expected return time. The pressure immobilisation technique buys time only if help is actually on the way.
Record the check
The Code of Practice expects you to keep first aid arrangements under review, and a documented workplace snake bite procedure and stock check is part of that trail. Note what you checked, what you replaced, and the date. If tracking kits across sites on a spreadsheet is the current system, KitCheck, a subscription to our proprietary kit management software, lets your own team keep that record and spot expiring stock before it lapses.
For businesses in and around Bendigo that would rather hand the whole job over, our onsite first aid audits and restocks cover it, booked by phone or email. Everywhere else, refill packs and a trade account with us keep the restock simple.
Snake season workplace first aid is a stocking decision, not a scramble after a bite. The season runs on into autumn, so get the kits checked against the spec and the gaps ordered now.
Order now the season is open
Check your kits against the spec, then order pressure bandages from our snake bandages collection. For multi-site or rural operations, or to set up a trade account, call 03 5443 2239 or email info@firstaiddistributions.com.au.