Jack Ashby

Absolutely.

She survived.

She survived.

Yeah, as far as it's recorded.

Although, let's hope amongst that unhappiness was just the joy of, oh, my goodness, look at this amazing animal.

But, yes, along with the...

Those specimens Hunter had sent drawings of his duck mole and of the wombat too.

So that's kind of how Europe came to know of the species.

It is bizarre to think that whilst, you know, running the Western sphere of World War II, it was like, oh, do you know what would really help me right now?

It's six live platypuses.

Gibraltar.

Yeah.

Yeah, so it was decided that, yes, it would probably be politically sensible for Australia to go against its legislation against exporting platypuses and send Winston Churchill one platypus.

So why did he want a platypus statue?

It's unclear.

He just really liked the idea of having a platypus.

A platypus is ridiculously hard to keep in captivity.

But the one man who had successfully bred them in captivity was David Flay.

And so he was put in charge of preparing this platypus, who was also to be called Winston, for his voyage to the UK.

And...