Because of my book called WOMBAT Selling I’m often asked, “Why Wombats?”

I like wombats because they are widely misunderstood and underestimated.

Go to Wikipedia to find out that wombats have an extraordinarily slow metabolism, taking around 14 days to complete digestion, and generally move slowly. They are the ‘greenest’ of creatures because of their amazing water and food conservation, three times more than kangaroos which is saying something! Yet they can go faster than any human and reach up to 40 km/h and maintain that speed for up to 90 seconds.
They are no pushovers, either. When attacked, they can summon immense reserves of strength — one defense of a wombat against a predator (such as a Dingo) underground is to crush it against the roof of the tunnel until it stops breathing. Its primary defence is its toughened rear hide with most of the posterior made of cartilage which, combined with its lack of a meaningful tail, presents a difficult-to-bite target to any enemy who follows the wombat into its tunnel. One naturalist commented, that a predator biting into a wombat’s rear would find it “comparable to the business end of a toilet brush”.

Probably, no-one knows more about wombats than ‘The Wombat Boy’. In the 1960s, Peter Nicholson was a boy at Timbertop, the country ‘retreat’ for Geelong Grammar boys. Prince Charles went there, too. If you have time, read this transcript of Australian Story.

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