You know you’ve had a good holiday when you struggle to remember how you do things at home. Felix has completely forgotten that he curls up on Mum’s bed in the morning, instead choosing the bathmat, squeezed between the shower and the door. The underfloor heating might be a factor.

The platypus seems to be fitting in nicely on top of my computer screen beside a little wombat from a previous visit to Australia. Below them, the little echidna carved in Huon pine, seems right at home. I still get a start when I see Matilda, the Tasmanian wombat, on the edge of the sofa. Come to think of it, she looks a bit startled too.

It’s good to know that we saw the real things in the wild. As many Tasmanian animals are nocturnal, we were lucky to see the ones we did. I bought this book from the Devonport Bookshop.

It would have been good to have seen a bandicoot. What a great name. I first encountered one in Norman Lindsay’s The Magic Pudding, featuring the strange – and even more strange for being anthropomorphised – Australian animals.

We did see parrots (mainly white cockatoos) and kookaburras, plus the rare sight of a white (albino) kangaroo near Cradle Mountain, and a white sea eagle on the Gordon River.

Back home, the birds seem to have abandoned us. My neighbour says they’re over at her place pulling up newly sown plants. But the apple core I put in the bird feeder last night has disappeared and some sparrows have discovered Mum’s left over porridge this afternoon. They don’t seem to have lost the habit of checking just in case.