Eric Worrell

Eric Arthur Frederic Worrell, MBE (27 October 1924 – 13 July 1987) was an Australian herpetologist, naturalist, science writer and zoo founder and director, known for establishing the Australian Reptile Park at Wyoming on the NSW Central Coast in 1959.

Worrell's collection of snake venom was utilised by the Australian Serum Laboratories as essential in the production of snake anti-venom in Australia.

Early life Worrell was born at Granville, New South Wales the son of salesman (Charles) Percy Frederic Worrell and his wife Rita Mary Ann Worrell (née Rochester). Eric was educated at Glenmore Road Public School in Paddington then Sydney Boys High School. By the age of 10 he was keenly interested in wildlife, keeping reptiles and other animals at home (first at Paddington then around 1938, to Cecily Street, Lilyfield). He was encouraged in his hobby by his parents and by George Cann, the "Snake Man of La Perouse", and latterly Keeper of Reptiles at Taronga Park Zoo.

He left school at 13 and spent several years in work gangs in regional New South Wales and Queensland, studying drawing and photography in his spare time.

Worrell purchased land at Wyoming, New South Wales in 1958 establishing the Australian Reptile Park, which opened in October 1959, with a large number of exotic as well as Australian animals. In 1963, he had a giant dinosaur statue erected at its entrance as a tourist drawcard, one of Australia's first "Big Things".

Worrell married Carol Renee Hawkins, a shop assistant, on 31 July 1948 and had three children. They divorced in 1971, and he remarried to Robyn Beverley Innes on 16 June 1973, who was his secretary, they divorced in 1985.

Among his friends were the naturalist Vincent Serventy, zoologist Jock Marshall, photographer Jeff Carter and artist Russell Drysdale.

In his later years, he was beset with personal, health, and financial problems and tried to sell the Reptile Park in 1985, however he was given a lifeline when entertainer Bobby Limb and local businessman Ed Manners bailed him out of his financial difficulties. In the same year the ARP began supplying funnel-web spider venom to the CSL in the process of developing an anti-venom. He and Robyn received the National Australia Bank's humanitarian award for their contribution to the development of an antivenene for the Sydney funnel-web spider in 1981. Snake Bitten, a book about Worrell, was published in 2010.