We Australians pride ourselves on our native animals. Koalas, kangaroos, wombats, deadly snakes, platypuses (platypi?), drop bears, emus … just some of the animals that have spent millions of years evolving separately from the rest of the world’s fauna on this island nation of ours. But most of us probably don’t think too much about them during our day-to-day lives. Alistair Paton’s “Of Marsupials and Men” puts a spotlight on men (and the occasional woman) who made Australia’s wildlife the centre of their lives. With its light humorous tone and wide range of characters, Paton’s book is an easy and entertaining read.
He starts us off in the 17th century with William Dampier, whose “main line of business was piracy”, apparently. He was also one of the first Englishmen to set foot on Australian soil. But it’s the 18th century that saw the rise of the men Paton writes about, a “remarkable band of enthusiastic amateurs who were inspired to get to know the weird and wonderful creatures of the new colony”. The book explores the transformation of public attitude “from scorn and embarrassment to wonder and pride” in our unique native animals. In fact, the “deadliness of the country’s snakes, spiders, crocodiles, sharks, jellyfish, ants, shells [is] a matter of national pride”. That line, on page 10, was the first of Paton’s I nodded in complete agreement at; it wasn’t the last.
As well as agreeing with Paton on various occasions, I also learned quite a few things I didn’t know. For example, there were men in the 19th century who made a full-time career out of collecting Australian animals and shipping them back to England to join people’s private collections of exotic creatures. Stuffed, mostly, although there were live exports as well (with varying degrees of success). Animals came the other way, too; the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria (active in the 1860s) focused on importing more familiar animals from the other side of the world (also with varying degrees of success). Approaches such as these gifted us with rabbits, garden snails and foxes; English trout and carp; and camels and buffaloes. The gifts that are still giving today.
These men led, through a more animal centred approach which grew in the 20th century, eventually to some names familiar from our TV screens in the 1970s and 80s: Harry Butler, Alby Mangels, the Leyland Brothers, Les Hiddins (better known as the Bush Tucker Man), Ron and Valerie Taylor. Steve Irwin doesn’t get a mention, but I feel like the Crocodile Hunter who took Australian animals to the world is the natural evolution from these earlier media stars.
Paton ties up his book quite neatly by linking this evolution of our wildlife enthusiasts with the development of our national identity. “The koalas painted by John Lewin, the birds collected by John Gould, the platypus carried in a box on the lap of David Fleay, on a commercial flight to New York, the snakes milked by Tom ‘Pambo’ Eades and the sharks filmed by Ron and Valerie Taylor have all become part of Australia’s national identity … they are part of how we see ourselves as Australians.” And he calls on us to “protect the legacy of the unusual and exceptional people who have dedicated their lives to finding and understanding our native wildlife.”
This is a book you can read from start to finish, with a clear narrative structure where each chapter leads on logically from the previous one. Or you can dip in and out, moving from snakes to birds and back again. I’m more a start to finish reader while on the couch, myself. Oh, one last thing; read the footnotes as you go. All of them. But especially the one on page 147.
Author: Alistair Paton
Publisher: Black Inc. Books
Paperback ISBN: 9781760643645
eISBN: 9781743822487
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This book review is supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.
