The announcement yesterday by the State Government that logging of native timber in Victoria would end by 2030 is at least a step in the right direction and an indication that the Government is aware of the problem and concerned by the flow on effects of the destruction of native ecosystems. More than 60 per cent of the forest that existed at the time of first settlement is now gone. Clearing land for urban expansion and agriculture, logging forests and damming rivers have all contributed to this problem while Victoria also enjoys the dubious reputation of being the most deforested state in Australia. It has been reported that Australia has the fourth-highest level of animal species extinction in the world with the number of extinct species topping 40 with another 106 listed as critically endangered. Platypus are susceptible to illegal netting practices in the river and the morning I spotted the Platypus, I saw a dog running off the lead and into the water in the immediate vicinity of the sighting. We’ve even had a beautiful, chocolate coloured swamp wallaby in our garden but while wallabies and kangaroos seem to have urbanized OK, other animals don’t necessarily adapt so well. I see wallabies often enough in Yallambie Park, including a pair that seem to have taken up residence on the ridge above the Platypus bathing pool. It is evidence only of the difficulties some species have adapting to life within an urbanised landscape and how unobservant we tend to be in our every day lives. That doesn’t necessarily mean the Platypus is an endangered species. Halmaturus ualabatus, (swamp/black wallaby) by John Gould, from The Mammals of Australia, vol 2, 1863. Similarly Wragge’s great grandson, Bill Bush reported seeing them regularly while growing up at Yallambie in the 1950s but in all the years that we’ve lived here, this is the first time I’ve seen one. Often we would see six or ten platypus in a day.”(Wright, Recollections of the Plenty River, 1974, quoted in Calder, p212). ![]() Historically, the Plenty River is said to have been abundant with these aquatic native animals with Thomas Wragge’s grandson, Frank Wright remembering the river at Yallambie before the Great War, writing that, “Possums and platypus were plentiful. Shy and nocturnal, they are all too seldom seen however. Platypus are possibly more common along watercourses in the suburbs than you might think. Ornithorhynchus anatinus (platypus) by John Gould, from The Mammals of Australia, vol 1, 1863. It proves that God has a sense of humour. When stuffed examples were sent for study from Australia to Britain at the end of the 18th century, outraged scholars believed they were the victims of an attempted antipodean hoax for if the imaginary Babel Fish can be used as “a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God,” then the Platypus is the ultimate contradiction. A semi-aquatic, egg laying, mammal it is the sole survivor of the family Ornithorhynchidae, in the genus Ornithorhynchus (bird billed). Playtpus, for that’s what my furry friend turned out to be, is a somewhat paradoxical animal. (Source: Pictures Collection, State Library Victoria). “Ornithorhynchus paradoxus” (platypus) by Eugene von Guerard, April, 1854. Platypus by George Shaw, from The Naturalist’s Miscellany, 1799. ‘That’s a good sign for the health of the river.’ Morning mists on the Plenty River at Yallambie, September, 2019. ‘Must be a pair of them,’ I thought as I turned away. It didn’t break the surface of the water again while I watched but I could see the direction that it took underwater, marked by a “V” on the surface of the pool heading in the direction of an obscuring reed bed and the source of the first splash. Turning in the direction of the new sound, I was just in time to see something furry go into the water with a kersplosh and an instant later I saw it rolling over in the water of the overhanging river bank, unmistakable now in its appearance with a short, flat tail. As I crossed the river from the Yallambie to Montmorency side at the bridge below the site of Casa Maria I heard a splash and, pausing to look upriver in the direction of the sound, I heard another movement just below me. Ornithorhynchus anatinus – I was walking in the park early in the morning a week ago when I saw it. ![]() Pool on the Plenty River below the “Casa Maria” escarpment, October, 2019. ![]() If you’ve got 20 cents in your pocket though, you could be closer to one than you think. I’m sure you know the answer already although chances are, like me you’ve probably never seen one outside of a natural history museum. What’s small and furry, has a duck bill and webbed feet, lays eggs while suckling it’s young and can be found on occasion with a sting close alongside its beaver like tail?
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