THE Mildura Visitor Information Centre has capped off its successful Wildlife Week with a St John’s Ambulance first aid course tackling snake, spider, and insect bites.
More than a dozen children attended the event to learn the important lifesaving skills.
“We did a demonstration on how to provide first aid for someone who has been bitten by a snake, spider, wasp or ant,” St John’s Sarah Arnold said.
‘In our region, we’ve get redback spiders, brown wolf spiders, huntsman spiders and we have the eastern brown snake and red belly black snakes,” she said.
“A child can learn how to put a bandage on someone and call an ambulance and it can save someone’s life, especially in this area, where we have very venomous snakes.
“We taught them to get the person somewhere safe in the shade, apply a compression bandage to them and get medical assistance by calling an ambulance and getting them to the hospital for treatment.”
Ms Arnold said the demonstration was popular with the children.
“The kids seemed very engaged and seemed to like it, they had lots of questions, which I love, because it means they were keen to learn,” she said.
“They loved seeing the ambulance as well.”
Visitor centre team leader Johanna Lucas said Wildlife Week had been a success.
“Our door counter shows during Wildlife Week up until Thursday, we have had over 1000 people through the doors,” she said.
“The purpose of it was to invite locals into the centre to see what we do here, but also to show off what we’ve got in our region.
“We had Parks Victoria come in and talk about the parks in the region, and the different types of wildlife you might find, then we had Mallee Conservation come in to chat about interacting with the local environment and then we had EnviroEDU and people got to have a hands on touch with the animals.”
Ms Lucas said they would look to put on more events throughout the year.
“We have given out lots of information on things you can do in the Mildura region to try and get people out and about,” she said.
“We are looking at whether we do it annually, but certainly we will look to have more activation throughout the year and see how we can highlight our local tourism attractions.”
