I lived in Inglewood when it was an outer suburb, my parents had a nursery in the bush at Morley Park as it was then, most of the local snakes were Dugites and I used to ride my bike to places to get Tigers, even get the ferry to Garden island and Rotnest and come back with bags of reptiles. Talked my parents into caravan holidays to places like Mt Magnet and Carnarvon so I could hunt reptiles, I also had a Bardick, great snake, you don't hear much about them now, even had Pebble Dragons. I had a wild life show at the school fete and borrowed some animals from Harry Butler including an albino Dugite, he tried to convince my parents I was not mad. Our back yard was made reptile proof and crawling with Bob Tails and Blueys and I had pit like outdoor enclosures for some of my snakes, used to climb in and walk around amongst them, others in tanks heated by light globes. Never had hooks, just free handled everything, worked on the philosophy that if the animal did not feel threatened it would not be aggressive but some Dugites were just vicious and dangerous to handle.
1950's, I'm 74 now, all the books I read then were pre Taipan antivenene and it wasn't readily available till after 1955. Perth did not have tv then and any information I had re Queensland came from an uncle in Brisbane.