Those who partook
of the last of the wallabies have gone the way of all flesh, and the
incident is instructive only as an illustration of the manner in which
animals may suddenly disappear from confined localities, leaving no relic
of previous existence. Considering the bulk of Dunk Island (3 1/2 square
miles), and recognising the rule that islands are necessarily poorer in
species than continents, it is yet remarkable that no evidence of
marsupials is to be found, and that the oldest blacks maintain that none
of the type ever existed here.
Though the drawings in caves depict lizards, echidna, turtle and men,
there is no representation of kangaroo or wallaby. It is highly probable
that if such had been common, the black artists would have chosen them as
subjects, since nearly all their studies are from Nature.
The largest and heaviest four-footed creature now existent on Dunk Island
is the so-called porcupine (spiny ant-eater or echidna). An animal which
possesses some of the features of the hedgehog of old England, and
resembles in others that distinctly Australian paradox, the platypus,
which has a mouth which it cannot open--a mere tube through which the
tongue is thrust, which in the production of its young combines the
hatching of an egg as of a bird, with the suckling of a mammal, and which
also has some of the characteristics of a reptile, cannot fail to be an
interesting object to every student of the marvels of Nature.
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