Ken Gelder

And while she was being chased, she lifts her joey out of her pouch to lighten the load and also to try and survive.

And with the intention of going back after the hunt is over, if she survives, to pick up her Joey and recover her child.

But when she goes back, she can't find her Joey.

Her Joey's gone and she weeps.

Oh, yes, absolutely.

The fox gets introduced very early on.

Actually, it gets introduced to the hunting clubs in the 1820s in Sydney and 1830s.

That's supposed to be where we get our foxes in Australia from.

They're extremely good at adapting and extremely good at surviving.

I mean, you know, the introduced species in colonial fiction can play out in all sorts of ways.

I mean, the most obvious examples would be sheep and cattle.

The first fleet brings over sheep and cattle and people start to farm as quickly as possible.

Cattle escape and become a bit feral for a while.

Horses escape.

We know about Brumbies, and so we have a lot of introduced horses in Australia that are now feral.

Lots and lots of animals get introduced.

Sparrows get brought over to Australia in the 1870s, and there's a beautiful children's story by Marcus Clark, I think published in 1870 or so, about a sparrow that again escapes and has to make his own way in the world in Victoria.

But sparrows get introduced in 1870 or thereabouts,

Lots of other kinds of birds and, of course, fish and so on get introduced.

And in the 1860s and 1870s in the colonies in Australia, acclimatization societies get set up.