THE OLDEST PLATYPUS
BY JAMES MATHEWS (HEAD OF ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES)
I love stories. I love hearing them and telling them. I love laughing till my sides hurt from hearing funny ones and I love crying when I hear sad ones. But really, stories are part of the fabric of our lives, painted like a mural into the way we make sense of things that happen.
This is a story about the oldest platypus in Australia, and it's perfectly true. When I first came to this beautiful school I had a year 6 student tell me a story that we had the oldest platypus in Australia living in our own creek, Monbulk creek. I thought she was joking or making it up but then I read this ABC article (see the attached link) I began to believe it was true. It tells about the oldest platypus in Australia being in sighted many times, caught and examined by local scientists. He has even been given the name of 'Bill' by locals.
This community monotreme hero, Bill was first caught and tagged as a platypup (not an offical term yet but one advocated by some marsupial scientists) in the year 2000, when we were all getting over the Y2K bug scare and listening to Silverchair and Vanessa Amorosi. He has now been caught again and examined 24 years later, becoming the oldest platypus to be monitored in the wild when playpai usually live to 18 or so.
Bill tells us a story not just of his age breaking determination but of our community. It tells us of the people in our school who have been so committed to seeing our stretch of Monbulk Creek cleaned up with all its rubbish removed like car bodies and steel drums. It shows us how they pulled out and removed a tangled mess of ivy and blackberries. This story displays how they strategically planted year after year native and indigenous plants to sustain a healthy habitat for Bill.
If you look closely around the school Bill's story is painted on the walls in murals but he is also painted as a mural telling a story on the hearts of the people in this community.
A people whose story continues in this same way. This community loves a God who designed a brilliant animal like Bill, with the purpose of displaying his glory. This community find joy in conserving and fighting for a platypus' habitat so that he and his friends can thrive in the future.