Scientfic name    Ornithorhuynchus anatinus       

Common name     Platypus

  Perhaps 10 years ago we were having a survey done for a covenant over the property (which we did not go ahead with), the bloke doing the survey came up to a pool in the creek that runs through Sassafras and said "you'd have to have Platypus somewhere around here, this is just the kind of place you would expect to find them."

  Than a few years later after a flood we found a dead baby Platypus next to the bridge across Mooral Creek, it seems to have drowned some how.  Unfortunately I happened to be carrying a lump hammer, I had been hammering in stakes.  I used that to get some idea of scale for the photo.  An unfortunate choice of objects, other wise I would put the photo up.

  About 4 months ago I was wandering over the bridge on our internal creek at a spot we call Brumby Bog and looked into the creek.  There was a Platypus just below me. Swimming against the current, bill going side to side, it stopped, looked up at me and then kept on going about its' business for 10 seconds or so then swam on and dissapeared.  No camera so no photo.  I don't usually carry a camera.

  After that I kept a lookout.  I was scouting around for good plants under a Privet canopy a lot further downstream on the same creek, I was about to start killing off Large Leaf Privet in that area and thought I should have look anyway.
I looked across the pool I was next to and there was this rather large burrow in the creek bank.  After a bit of a look around on the web I figure it is most likely one of the Platypus burrows in the territory.  Since then I have seen others smaller and more oval in shape, without the large amounts of gravel but that is probably just a function of where the burrow is.  I've also read that Water Rats (which I have seen a couple of times years ago, in this same stretch of pond) and Platypus are known to borrow each others unoccupied abodes temporarily.
This one is up stream by over a 100, perhaps 200 metres, it looks more like what I might expect with the flattened area outside the burrow.
Or maybe this is what I'm looking for, the burrow above is about 10 metres to the right of this one.

Both are oval, not round like the fresh water crayfish burrows that abound.

At some stage I will get some Infrared video going to see who really lives in these burrows.

I have seen both Playtpus and Water Rats in this stream.