The Platypus

There's always been a special place in my heart for the platypus, the most unlikely and awkward of animals. It's as if the construction team, after assembling all the creatures on earth, had a few left over parts and after a few Friday beers decided to have a little fun. Bits of duck and rat and beaver were all thrown together to form the ultimate evolutionary underdog: a semi-aquatic, burrowing, egg-laying almost-mammal with poisonous spurs.

The first European explorers sent back a sample of the platypus to England and legend has it that those Poms thought some tomfoolery was afoot. As learned men, schooled in the New Sciences, they refused to believe such a misconception could exist and tried to remove the platypus' bill using pliers, certain as they were that it was a duck's beak stuck on a water rat. Australians love to take the piss, especially with the Motherland and its assumed superiority. In this case the joke was all the sweeter for being one made by the country itself.

Eungella is 80km out of my way but with the best chance of sighting platypuses in the wild in Australia, it's a detour I gladly make. After a long drive through seemingly endless fields of sugar cane I reach the start of the Eungella national park. The steep climb has the Jackaroo straining but with my gentle words of encouragement (e.g. "come on, you rusty hunk of shit") we make it to the top to be rewarded by glorious views of the valleys below.

I leave the car and follow the small path into the cool shade of the rainforest. Here a small wooden viewing platform has been built on the riverbank. The platypus is extremely shy and skittish and I've always thought that to see one in the wild would be a near impossible event. As I stand quietly on the river's edge however I'm treated to the sight of three of these elusive little creatures, swimming and fishing only a few meters in front of me.

They look like little wind-up toys, with podgy bodies, slick, plastic bills and rubbery webbed feet. They're comical little feet paddle rapidly and out of time with each other to give a duck-like waddle to their swimming.

They pay no notice to my voyeuristic attention and studiously dive for small shrimp, closing their eyes and digging through the murky bottom with their sensitive bills. Wherever they work, great clouds of silt billow into the water and I lose sight of them until they surface a few moments later, sucking in air through their little nostrils.

The busy industry of the platypuses provides a silent reprimand to the dozens of lazy fresh-water turtles that share this secluded bend in the river. These lazy, moss-covered reptiles paddle casually around, drifting on the surface with their heads just out of the water for air. All seem contentedly oblivious to the fussing of the nearby platypuses.