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Updated: May 28, 2025
The beautifully-timbered plains, or the limestone cliffs of the noble Murray the naked plains that bound on either side the strip of forest-trees of huge dimensions, by which the Lachlan is bordered, the constantly full stream, the water-worn and lightly-timbered banks, the clear open space between the river and its distant margin of reeds, which mark the character of the Murrumbidgee, the low grassy banks or limestone rocks, the cascades and caverns, the beautiful festoons of creeping plants, the curious form of the duck-billed platypus, which are to be found on the Glenelg; the sandstone wastes of the Wollondilly, the grassy surface of the pretty Yarrayne, with its trees on its brink instead of on its bank; the peculiar grandeur of the tremendous ravine, 1,500 feet in depth, down which the Shoalhaven flows; these and many more remarkable features of scenery in the Australian rivers, would afford abundance of materials for description either in poetry or prose.
"Well, bring the little Human here," said the Platypus in a more friendly tone, "and if I feel quite sure on that point I will permit an interview." Two bounds brought the Kangaroo to where Dot was hidden.
In such a group it is of the utmost importance that every egg should develop; the destruction of a single one is a real and important loss to the species. It is not enough to produce such an egg; it must be most scrupulously guarded. Even the egg of the platypus is deposited in a nest in a hole in the bank, and the female Echidna carries the egg in a marsupial pouch until it develops.
You Humans have no feelings at all compared with ours. Why! my fifth pair of nerves are larger than a man's! Humans get on my nerves dreadfully!" it ended in disgusted accents. "She did not mean to hurt you," said the gentle Kangaroo, soothingly. "Is there anything we can do to make you feel comfortable again?" "There is nothing you can do," sighed the Platypus, now mournful and depressed.
At the Kangaroo's bidding, she hid a little way from the edge of the pool, but she was able to see all that happened. The Kangaroo evidently did not enjoy the prospect of conversing with the Platypus. She kept on fidgeting about, putting off calling to the Platypus by one excuse and another: she was decidedly ill at ease. "Are you frightened of the Platypus?" asked Dot.
They couldn't be, you see, because of that trouble in the Ark." "But that was so long ago," said Dot, filled with compassion for the lonely Platypus; "and, after all, this is not the same Platypus, nor are all the bush creatures the same now as then."
Then Dot would laugh, and rush forward, and throw her arms around her friend; and the Kangaroo, with a quiet smile, would rub her little head against Dot's curls, and they were both very happy. So, although it was really a long and rough way to the little creek where the Platypus lived, it did not seem at all far.
Instead there were found animals that are found nowhere else, and which seem to belong to a different and so-called extinct geologic age, such as the kangaroo, wombats, the platypus which the sailors used to tell us was neither bird not beast, and yet was both.
The wattle-trees were out in golden bloom, and the snow-water from the mountains set the river running white with foam, fighting its way over bars of granite into big pools where the platypus dived, and the wild ducks busy with the cares of nesting just settled occasionally to snatch a hasty meal and then hurried off, with a whistle of strong wings, back to their little ones.
If you treat it as an animal, you offend its bird nature, and if you treat it as a bird, the animal in it is mighty indignant. One never knows where one is with a creature that is two creatures," said the Kangaroo. Dot was so sorry for the perplexity of her friend, that she suggested that they should not consult the Platypus.
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