Differentiating Antaresia (Children's Complex) Pythons using something other than color pattern
I finally got frustrated enough to dig up A Revision of the Liasis childreni species-group (Serpentes: Boidae) L.A. Smith, 1985 - the original paper that split up this species complex, and when even Smith made primary determinations off of pattern and color alone, I took matters into my own hands and dug into the his raw data. 

I have compiled the mean scale counts for each species into a table, and truncated any rows that showed no useful degrees of deviation for any species, resulting in the following:

             A. Childreni  A. Maculosa  A. Stimsoni  A. Stimsoni Orientalis  A. Perthensis
Ventrals     272.8        263.5         279.5        263.8                   232
Subcaudals   47.3         42.1          46.2         42.8                    38.7
Midbody      41.3         38.3          43.4         40.3                    32.7
Loreals      7.9          4.7           12.2         7.9                     7.3
Postoculars  3.6          3.1           4.2          3.8                     3.4
Pits         4.5          4             5.6          4.8                     3.1


I am including this table in its entirety to assist future identification efforts within the complex, as the original paper did a poor job of presenting this data.

The most useful difference for my purposes - distinguishing between A. maculosa and A. childreni - appears to be loreal scale count. The loreal scales sit between the eye and nostril of the snake, and do not include scales which belong to the orbital and nasal structures (The region marked "l" in the diagram below).



Following up on this, I examined a number of close-up photos of known examples of both species, and very quickly identified a distinctive difference in not just the count but also the pattern of loreal scales. Once you're looking in the right place, the difference is obvious.

A. Childreni showing its distinctive granularly-clustered loreal scales:


A. Maculosa showing its smaller number of tightly structured loreal scales: