An unusual item unearthed in Townsville was the above 45 rpm Capricorn Record which featured Ram Chandra , the Taipan Man , autographed by him in 1979, and the massive 1974 Australia Day flooding of Brisbane caused by Cyclone Wanda .
Born Edward Royce Ramsamy at Lawrence, near Grafton , NSW, in May 1921, he joined up in the l940s with Nazim Shah in the Carnival of Eastern Wonders on the show circuit, later changing his name to Ram Chandra , specialising in handling and displaying venomous and non venomous snakes in his Pit of Death .
Through his interest in and knowledge gained about deadly Taipans, he helped the Commonwealth Serum Laboratory develop an antivenene for the usually fatal Taipan bite . The antivenene saved the life of Bruce Stringer , a Cairns schoolboy, and Chandra was awarded the British Empire Medal in the l975 Queen's Birthday Honours.
Chandra was himself bitten by a taipan . Married in Mackay, Queensland , his family consisted of eight children and three more that were adopted . He died in Mackay on July 1,l998.
On the record , the vocals are both by Lyall Sutcliffe backed by The Wagon Wheels . Sutcliffe and his brother Geoff were longtime buskers who travelled far and wide. In 2014 they performed in a western Queensland tour , aged 78 and 80 respectively , their musical minded parents living to 101 and 99 .
In September 2014 , the popular record shop called Capricorn Records , at Warrnambool, Victoria , run by Michael Fitzgerald , closed after 35 years of trading .
(Taipan, Chandra ,Cyclone.)
