Via Abc.net:

Stormtrooper armour is hopeless against lightsabers – but it is good protection against the venomous snakes of north Queensland.

Scott Loxley, who is walking around Australia dressed as an “elite soldier of the Galactic Empire” from sci-fi franchise Star Wars to raise money for charity, says the iconic armour protected him from a king brown snake bite this week.

The 47-year-old set out from Melbourne on the 15,000-kilometre journey in 2013 in an attempt to raise $100,000 for the Monash Children’s Hospital.

He reached Queensland last month, following the long journey across Victoria and South Australia, up the Western Australian coast and through the Top End.
Mr Loxley had just left Yalboroo, north of Mackay, on Wednesday when he came across what he thought was another dead snake on the road.

But that snake turned out to be a king brown, he said, and it was alive and well.

Mr Loxley, a former Army soldier, used his official Facebook page to share the story of his encounter with the “vicious” snake.

“He’s lunged at me and bit me but the good news is the armour, he bit me in the shin, the armour actually protected me and stopped the bite,” Mr Loxley said.

Thankfully, the force of the bite was not enough to penetrate the armour.

“I could feel the teeth on the plastic scraping but the armour actually stopped something,” he said.

“So all those people who rag on the old stormtroopers, ‘you know, the armour doesn’t do this, it doesn’t do that’ … it stopped the snake bite and probably saved my life today.”

According to Australian Museum, king browns, or mulga snakes, bite savagely and may hang on and chew as they inject their venom, which is highly toxic and can be expressed in enormous quantities.

Mr Loxley said it was the first time a snake had bitten him on his journey, although he usually catches taipans and western browns to eat.

To date, Mr Loxley has raised close to $40,000 for the hospital.