page_title: Wombat
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Wombat / Human relations / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Ballarat Wildlife Park, Ballarat, Australia, wombats
context_page_description: Wombats are short-legged, muscular quadrupedal marsupials that are native to Australia. They are about 1 m in length with small, stubby tails and weigh between 20 and 35 kg. There are three extant species and they are all members of the family Vombatidae. They are adaptable and habitat tolerant, and are found in forested, mountainous, and heathland areas of southern and eastern Australia, including Tasmania, as well as an isolated patch of about 300 ha in Epping Forest National Park in central Queensland.
context_section_description: Depictions of the animals in rock art are exceptionally rare, though examples estimated to be up to 4,000 years old have been discovered in Wollemi National Park. The wombat is depicted in aboriginal Dreamtime as an animal of little worth. The mainland stories tell of the wombat as originating from a person named Warreen whose head had been flattened by a stone and tail amputated as punishment for selfishness. In contrast, the Tasmanian aboriginal story first recorded in 1830 tells of the wombat (known as the drogedy or publedina) the great spirit Moihernee had asked hunters to leave alone. In both cases, the wombat is regarded as having been banished to its burrowing habitat. Estimates of wombat distribution prior to European settlement are that numbers of all three surviving species were prolific and that they covered a range more than ten times greater than that of today.
  The name "wombat" comes from the now nearly-extinct Darug language spoken by the aboriginal Darug people, who originally inhabited the Sydney area. It was first recorded in January 1798, when John Price and James Wilson, a white man who had adopted aboriginal ways, visited the area of what is now Bargo, New South Wales. Price wrote: "We saw several sorts of dung of different animals, one of which Wilson called a Whom-batt, which is an animal about 20 inches high, with short legs and a thick body with a large head, round ears, and very small eyes; is very fat, and has much the appearance of a badger." Wombats were often called badgers by early settlers because of their size and habits. Because of this, localities such as Badger Creek, Victoria, and Badger Corner, Tasmania, were named after the wombat. The spelling went through many variants over the years, including "wambat", "whombat", "womat", "wombach", and "womback", possibly reflecting dialectal differences in the Darug language.
  After the ship Sydney Cove ran aground on Clarke Island in February 1797, the crew of the salvage ship, Francis, discovered wombats on the island. A live animal was taken back to Port Jackson. Matthew Flinders, who was travelling on board the Francis on its third and final salvage trip, also decided to take a wombat specimen from the island to Port Jackson. Governor John Hunter later sent the animal's corpse to Joseph Banks at the Literary and Philosophical Society to verify that it was a new species. The island was named Clarke Island after William Clark.
  Wombats were classified as vermin in 1906, and were subject of the introduction of a bounty in 1925.  This and the removal of a substantial amount of habitat have greatly reduced numbers and range of the wombat.
caption: Common wombat and joey eating from a bowl at a zoo
exif: {}