This, then, is the first of a new sub-set of articles which will look at Write Australian matters from the alphabetical and realistic point of view and will also show how Australians themselves regard these matters. Australia has plenty of wild mammals, divided into the native and introduced species. Introduced species include deer, water buffalo, donkeys, brumbies, camels, wild pigs, goats, rabbits, rats, mice and foxes. Here, as you can see, we have representatives of most types of wild beast, excluding big cats and bears, elephants, apes etc. The young are able to walk and run a short time of birth.
Native mammals are completely different.
They include kangaroos, koalas, bandicoots, possums, wombats, devils, platypus, echidnas, and quolls. They bear live young, but the babies are so undeveloped that they need to be nurtured in a pouch for months until they are mature enough to face the world. These two are monotremes, more primitive than the mammal, they lay eggs, lack pouches and nipples but still nurture their babies against their bodies and feed them on milk. Most introduced mammals have been here for no more than 220 or so years, but a few, such as rats and pigs, arrived earlier on ships. The animals mentioned above all have their own niches in the Australian ecology, but although most of them are reasonably common, it is a mistake to simply draw an Aussie animal out of a hat and plonk it in your novel with the idea of adding local colour.