Koji has kindly agreed to share some photographs of a platypus he caught in the wild in Tasmania last week. Platypus sightings are quite rare and we have never seen one in this busy day tripper area.
Over to Koji:
My wife, her uncle and I went to Cradle on Friday for bushwalking and stayed at Scout Hut near Crater Lake. On the way back to Ronny Creek carpark on Saturday, about noon we walked past other hikers and they said to us they saw a platypus in a little creek along the boardwalk so we kept en eye out for that.
As we approached the place we saw the platypus swimming along a creek.
We stumbled across this fantastic picture of a platypus taken by Cain Doherty in the Cradle Mountain area. It is a once in a lifetime shot.
Cain describes how he came across this hardy platypus that is swimming in a stream with pieces of snow:
Rebecca and I considered ourselves incredibly lucky to share a few minutes with this timid Australian mammal. We were high up on the Cradle Plateau, near Kitchen Hut, trudging a 6 hour hike that runs up and across the face of Cradle Mountain, when we saw some movement in a shallow pool. This was the first time either of us had seen a Platypus so close and it was owed to the fact that it …
Lake Elizabeth, in the Great Otway National Park, is famous for platypus sightings. We visited the camping area and walked around Lake Elizabeth on a warm up trip for the Overland Track . We were lucky and had a “close encounter” with a very friendly platypus.
