As a 70-year-old woman of Chinese heritage who possesses a calm that works a treat on a stressed snake, Teresa Purnell is used to disappointing.
"It's funny what they expect when a snake catcher comes," Purnell says.
"I'm a bit boring. I don't fit the stereotype that they have. Where's the man with the black T-shirt and the tattoos?"
Purnell says many people also have a false impression that there'll be "a lot of jumping about", as seen in television's dangerous animals genre.
She recounts a call-out through her voluntary position with Hunter Wildlife Rescue. Athree-metre diamond python was curled up on a woman's front doorstep. Purnell arrived to find she had an audience.
"About 30 people were lined up, all with mobile phones ready to film the action," she says.
The first strategy on Purnell's list is to simply "offer the snake a dark place to hide". So she gently placed her snake-catching bag right next to the python.
"It just crawled into the bag with no prompting from me," Purnell says.
"I could hear the moans of disappointment behind me - it's just catching itself! It wasn't very exciting for them."
Rather than delivering a performance, Purnell's focus is rescue oriented. She knows that when she shifts a snake away from people she could be saving its life, as well as helping a frightened person. It is not uncommon for her to be greeted at a snake rescue by a person carrying a shovel.
Purnell had no inkling she would become a defender of snakes. After a career of commercial cookery teaching, she enrolled in a natural history illustration course where she met wildlife rescuers.
"I expressed interest in that, I said 'I think I'd like to do that, I like animals'. That's where it all began."
She went along to an introductory session and found most people wanted to help cute, furry animals and birds. There were "not many takers" for reptiles. As one of the few who didn't outright dislike snakes, Purnell was soon enrolled in snake handler training and quickly discovered she had a natural affinity with the much-maligned creatures.
"In that time I got to realise that snakes don't want to attack you," she says. "Sometimes if the snake got past your bag it would just snuggle up to your feet."
One day a big red-bellied black snake went around another trainee's bag, and slid up his trouser leg.
"They said 'Just hold your leg at the top and stop the snake getting the whole way up'. That poor man, he sweated bullets."
The method worked - when the snake found its path was blocked it turned around and slid back down.
"That was a defining moment for me," she says. Purnell is now dedicated to helping snakes. She has legally adopted three pythons (named Happy, Beautiful and Murray) who were abandoned as pets and she is working on a PhD based on promoting "harmonious coexistence" through an artistic approach to snake education.
"Illustration," she says, "is the key ... more show than tell. When you see it on a white background you can see a snake very clearly. Snakes are meant to blend in with their backgrounds."
Purnell has developed identification posters showing the Hunter region's 16 snake species, and subtly pointing out their benefits to people, such as the worm-like blind snake which eats termites.
Her delicately detailed watercolours, capturing the "beautiful sheen" and "velvety" qualities of snakes' skin, have also been shown in galleries. And she's had international recognition for her artistic contribution to snake conservation.
"I try to convey the true beauty," she says. "And I'm trying to give people tools to deal with snake encounters. It's a shock when you see a snake, especially if you've never seen one in your house before."
As she paints their finest details, scale by scale, noting glimpses of "sky blue" or a "salmon pink belly", Purnell counters with an experience that is eye-opening in a different way. "It's quite meditative," she says.
