One day near our fence I saw a man who seemed to be poking holes in the ground… I asked him what he was doing. The man said: ‘Well I am working for a Commonwealth laboratory in Melbourne… I am catching funnelweb spiders’. I said: ‘what are they? Hmm. That don’t look too bad.’ He said: ‘No they kill, you die.’ I said:  ‘How about getting me in on the job… So a while later I was set to work. I had a tin container like a large deed box that had all compartments like the old fashioned inkwell made of glass. You put it over the spider’s hole. I didn’t do too badly even in the first week. The place was a mass of funnelweb spiders.  I started to get a few pounds behind me… I used to get about 6d a spider. Then my thoughts turned to the swamp which was opposite us where we lived… I found a terrific lot of snakes in there.  I used to sell the skins to a small tannery in Willoughby which bought three to four red-belly black snakes and then a whole lot of snakes]  I took a lot of risks. I was very keen to make money and they wanted them for ladies shoes and handbags.