Automatic cameras deployed prior to the Survey appear to show Bobucks (Trichosurus caninus) in SW Gippsland have adapted to live underground. Or, at least, to exploit underground tunnels that, presumably, were excavated by wombats. This is quite atypical behaviour, probably forced by loss of preferred habitat?

Following on from The Gurdies and Bass River findings, we cast the photo net further afield and have now detected them near Koonwarra. This appears to mean that the speculations presented in our first paper (Vic. Nat., June 2004), that The Gurdies animals are a small isolated pocket possibly heading for extinction, are completely wrong. The animals discovered at Koonwarra inhabit an area of tee-tree scrub. The soil is dry and com[compacted an apparently devoid of the fungi that forms a staple part of their diet in wet mountain rainforests. All round here tee-tree has grown to about 2.5 to 3 metres tall. It's quite dark under the canopy. Their roots have penetrated the mound where the Bobucks' tunnel is. There's the odd eucalypt around there too. Quite a bit taller than the tee-trees but still no more than about 3 to 4 metres high.

Moreover, while the Bobuck is technically a semi-arboreal animal that is known to spend much time foraging at ground level, the ones at Koonwarra appear to be living underground, in burrows that we presume were excavated by wombats.

We still think the population is a relict from the days when the West Strzelecki Forest was cut down, but it now appears they've not only survived but have thrived. So much so that they are now widespread in southwest Gippsland. How they could have remained unrecorded until recently is a complete puzzle.

Are these various groups in contact with one another or are they genetically marooned in habitat islands, dotted about Gippsland? We have no idea, at this stage.

The take home lesson, we think, is that the dedicated habitat conservation efforts of organisations such as Landcare, Trust For Nature, Parks Victoria and the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) have really made a big difference to the survival prospects of our native animals. Public money thus spent is money spent well.

In conjunction with Melbourne University, we're now going to try and photographically survey the Gippsland Bobucks from Westernport to Corner Inlet to the Eastern Strzeleckies. The important thing is probably to delineate, as far as possible, the extent of this unusual population's range. We're hoping to present a further paper in the October or December issue of The Victorian Naturalist.

Some of the pictures are very mediocre quality because of the reflections from the perspex window in the camera box. These ones were taken with the much derided old "lunchbox camera" that we use first in new, unfamiliar areas. Because it's expendable. Laugh if you will! "Old Faithful" took the picture of the baby Bobuck that appeared in the April 22006 issue of The Victorian Naturalist.

Yet clearly these Bobucks live on the ground, where foxes lurk. At the Koonwarra site, no trees with suitable nesting hollows are evident. It looks as if the Bobuck population of the Gurdies and contiguous areas may be genetically isolated from their cousins elsewhere. It looks as if they may be subdivided into small, possibly isolated groups of related individuals, genetically marooned on habitat islands left over when from the time their world turned upside down. We don't know.

But if they are, then these are ideal conditions for a genetic experiment to take place. It'd be a chance for Darwinian Natural Selection to do its work on a group of peripheral isolates. Perhaps they have evolved a meaner, more aggressive Samurai-type attitude than their brethren elsewhere? On the other hand, maybe they're just a highly adaptable species and are quick enough to keep out of harm's way?

At some point during the survey, we'll try video-taping what happens when Bobucks and their enemies come face to face. Introduced feral's allegedly wipe the slate clear of the smaller native Australian marsupials. What if some marsupials are learning to fight back? That'd be something well worth finding out about!

How did the West Strzelecki Forest come to be chopped down? It's an interesting story, one that involves the Great Depression of the 1890s, financial ruin & unemployment, Victorian State Government paranoia about radical political agitation and an entity called the Leongatha Labour Colony. It's a damn good yarn, one that we might tell sometime soon?

FOR SCHOOLS: CHARLES Darwin and the Gippsland Bobucks

The foliage is tee-tree scrub, only about 2 to 3 metres high. The ground is dry, sandy and compacted and so not suitable for Bobucks' normal diet, which is rain-forest fungi. That's why they have the blunt, shovel shaped snout. In the Alps, they descend from trees to rummage around in damp leaf and bark litter on the forest floor. In the differences between these two cousin species, Trichosurus caninus and Trichosurus vulpecula, we can see the results of "natural selection" at work.

Summing up, we can say these lowland Gippsland Bobucks show 3 major divergences from alpine Bobucks.

• Atypical habitat. They don't appear to need eucalypts and associated tree hollows.
• They live on the ground, in tunnels. Either in reeds (Gurdies?) or underground (Koonwarra). Almost(?) certainly abandoned wombat burrows.
• Diet must be different from their alpine relatives. No fungus for one thing but acacia spp are available at Koonwarra.

Living the way they do, they //must// be able to see off major predators like foxes. Come to think of it, our cams have never detected foxes where Bobucks are to be found. Even though foxes are very numerous in Gippsland. Are Bobucks able to drive foxes away? That is the $64 question.