YALBOROO, Australia, Jan. 16 (UPI) -- An Australian man taking a nearly 10,000-mile walk across the country in his Star Wars stormtrooper costume said the armor saved him from a deadly snake bite.

Scott Loxley, whose 9,320-mile walk across Australia is aimed at raising money for the Monash Children's Hospital in Melbourne, said he was leaving Yalboroo, Queensland, Wednesday on his way to Mackay when he spotted what appeared to be a dead snake at the side of the road.


"He's lunged at me and bit me. But the good news is the armor -- he bit me in the shin -- and the armor actually protected me and stopped the bite," Loxley said. "I could feel the teeth scraping on the plastic, but the armor actually stopped something."

Loxley said the stormtrooper armor, long criticized by fans of the franchise as ineffective against attacks ranging from laser blasts to rocks thrown by Ewoks, proved it was in some way effective.

"So all those people that rag on the old stormtrooper because you know, the armor doesn't do this, it doesn't do that ... it stopped a snake bite and probably saved my life today," he said.

Loxley said the snake appeared to be a king brown snake, ranked as the sixth deadliest snake in Australia by the Australian Geographic.