ERIC WORRELL

The keeper Australia's antivenom program was built on. He started with a small aquarium at Umina Beach on the New South Wales coast, and in 1951 began sending tiger snake venom down to the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories — taipan venom followed the next year. Nobody had solved how to get venom there intact, so he built his own freeze dryer and worked out how to powder it, then moved the whole operation inland to Wyoming, NSW and opened the Australian Reptile Park, paying for the venom work with the front gate. He was appointed MBE in 1970 for his part in the antivenoms, and the funnel-web spider venom he began supplying that same year produced an antivenom that has held Australia to zero funnel-web deaths since 1981. Every vial of Australian antivenom still traces back through the park he built.