At the city Zoo I went purposively to a Plexiglas window booth, and peered into its stripe of shadow: ‘Where might I find the platypus?’

I knew Fleay’s ​‘We breed the platypus!’ and, increasingly, air travel brings on my bio-philia.

‘If I wanted to see one, I would have to leave town,’ the greeter said through the voice-loop, dreamily, ‘Take a day… hire a car, drive… and I’d be lucky to find one playing in a creek at the sanctuary.’

‘It was an unsuccessful animal,’ she added, quite friendly in the Aussie manner, ‘they just didn’t take to the Zoo and kept dying.’