The Secret Life of Wombats

Front Cover
Text Publishing, Jan 30, 2012 - Nature - 240 pages
Whitley Award winner for Best Popular Zoology Book.

With his usual brilliance James Woodford, bestselling author of The Wollemi Pine, explores the wombat's bizarre evolutionary history and perilous future: a mere 65 northern hairy-nosed wombats remain in the wild.

But this book also tells the extraordinary story of Peter Nicholson, a schoolboy from Timbertop who in the 1960s learned more about the secret lives of these animals than anyone before him.

This is popular science writing at its best: an irresistible subject in the hands of an irrepressible author.

'Woodford has done the research, he has read widely, spoken with the major wombat pundits and with the lay observers. He has travelled to gain direct experience of all species...I know more about wombats than I did, and retain some stark images which I hope never to lose.' Sunday Age

 

Selected pages

Contents

I
1
II
15
III
37
IV
55
V
69
VI
89
VII
107
VIII
129
IX
153
X
173
XI
191
XII
205
XIII
213
Copyright

Other editions - View all

The Secret Life of Wombats
James Woodford
No preview available - 2001
The Secret Life of Wombats
James Woodford
No preview available - 2002

Common terms and phrases

able Aborigines Alan Horsup animals arrived baby wombat Barbara Triggs Bass Strait Blyde bones breeding burrow cam called camp captivity carnivore centimetres colony common wombat creatures darkness dead wombat Deniliquin devils Dibben dingoes dirt discovered dogs Epping Forest excavating exploring extinct feeding female Flinders fossil Gaylene Godthelp grass grazing Green Corps Green Corps team Gregory River habitat head hectares hole Horsup hundred inside islands joey kangaroo kilograms kilometres koalas later legs lived looked Maher male mammal marsupials metres million years ago months Mooney Museum national park night No-one northern hairy-nosed wombat once palaeontologists PETER NICHOLSON placental population possums pouch predators Queensland river Riversleigh scientists skulls South Wales southern species strange survive Sydney Tasmanian teeth Tim Flannery Timbertop tree tunnel Tuppal underground walked wallabies Warendja Western Plains Zoo wild wildlife wombat burrow wombat-like wrote young wombat

About the author (2012)

James Woodford is a science and environment writer for the Sydney Morning Herald. In 1996 he won the Eureka Prize for environmental journalism, and was awarded the prestigious Michael Daley prize for science journalism in 1996 and 1997. His hugely entertaining book on wombats, The Secret Life of Wombats, won the Royal Zoological Society of NSW Whitley Award for Best Natural History Book. He lives with his family on the south coast of NSW.

Bibliographic information

TitleThe Secret Life of Wombats
AuthorJames Woodford
Editionrevised
PublisherText Publishing, 2012
ISBN1921834900, 9781921834905
Length240 pages
Subjects ›  › 

Nature / Animals / General
Nature / Endangered Species
Nature / General
  
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