Untitled-in-sydney

Along with the Kangaroo and Koala this must surely rate as one of the animals' most synonymous with Australia and what a queer fish it is.

One of a select few critters having membership of the Monotreme club, it was deemed to be a hoax when the first samples were returned to Great Britain upon discovery. It's a mammal, but lays eggs.

It looks like a beaver yet has the bill of a duck. The males (and not the females as I've incorrectly thought for years) are venonous, and while not deadly to humans can cause "excruciating pain". They're very odd.

And we saw one in the river at the foot of our weekend cottage. Supposedly it is quite unusual to see them but we'd been led to expect their presence so made the effort to watch out for one.

They're around at dawn and dusk. Saturday morning saw us outside on the river bank at about 0520 and a number of large spashes and a phantomy swimming thing reminiscent of an otter led us to conclude that Syd had indeed paid us a visit. We made sure we were around in the evening too - even putting off a visit to the local historic pub so we didn't miss it.

Having seen however fleetingly the swimming thing in the morning we had an idea of what to look for. After about 10 minutes of waiting the Platypus came swimming up the centre of the river. It would surface for about 10 feet, then dive for about the same distance before resurfacing.

I suppose that it was no further than about 10-12 feet away and although they're not large we could clearly see the bill, tail and legs in the water. Really we only saw it as it passed and after a couple of minutes the whole encounter was over so we headed back inside to have a quick drink at Australia's oldest continually licensed pub before eating some of Mr Skippy.

This counts as my first encounter with a uniquely and identifiably Australian animal. Shortly after arriving in the country we saw what we think was a Bandicoot, but can't really be sure that's what it was. I've still yet to see a wild Kangaroo or for that matter a captive one (except on a plate), and while I did see my first Wombats this weekend, all three were dead on the roadside which lessened their appeal significantly. Bloody large though. I thought one was a boulder.

Had the rest of the weekend been a total bust, our encounter with our aquatic neighbour would have made this a stand out weekend by any measure that I can think of.