Ruth Waterhouse

A couple of years ago I cared for a baby magpie with a broken leg. She healed up well and was eventually released with a couple of birds raised by another wildlife carer.

I occasionally hear on the grapevine that she is doing fine and making her way around the Kingston area.

After at least two years She’s back for a visit! I just love that magpie song and knew as soon as I heard it that it must be her. Good fun — and she still loves a hand out of her favourite meal worms.

Tasmania is home to eleven kinds of frog, from the gorgeous green and gold frog — the largest — to the musical banjo frog with its distinctive ‘plunk-plunk’ call.

All Australian frogs are creatures of Gondwanaland, the vast ancient continent which split into Australia and South America millions of years ago and they are quite distinct from their European relatives.

In recent times frog numbers have fallen sharply. Scientists put this down to pollution — frogs are extremely sensitive to many chemicals — and to the destruction of their habitat by human activity.

Now, another enemy in the shape of a fungal disease threatens frogs all over Australia and it has recently been found in Tasmania.

The mysterious Thylacine lives on in Tasmania’s imagination, even though some diehards still believe it is out there somewhere in the wilderness.

Tasmania is the only state in the world which uses an extinct animal as its emblem; the last one in captivity died in a Hobart zoo in 1936.

Its extinction was prophesied in 1863 by the famous naturalist John Gould. A large and fearsome-looking animal, it was feared by the settlers, even though it was far shyer and more nervous than its little cousin, the Tasmanian devil.

A government bounty, land clearing and, finally, a distemper-like disease meant its end – but tantalising stories of sightings persist to this day. Maybe, just maybe …

Now found only in Tasmania, in the distant past the Devil lived on mainland Australia too.

The early European settlers believed it killed livestock and trapped and hunted it almost to extinction, but after the death of the last Tasmanian Tiger it was protected.

Since then the Devil has become important culturally. Popular with tourists, it has been adopted by sports teams, businesses and government as a symbol.

But today this unique creature is again threatened with extinction by a deadly disease which baffles science.

Researchers hope to find a cure before it is too late; I hope they succeed.

Read more about them at the ABC’s Scribbly Gum web site.

The rabbit-sized Bilby, also known as the dalgyte, the pinkie, the ninu and the walpajim, is a relative of the bandicoot.

Its long ears not only give it acute hearing but help it to keep cool in its desert home. Like many marsupials, it comes out from its burrow only at night.

Farming, land clearing and predators such as dogs and feral cats have greatly reduced its numbers and it is now found in only a few remote, arid places.

Many Australians hope that replacing the Easter Bunny with the Easter Bilby will help to save this charming and inoffensive animal.