The day before at dusk I had waited by the river for about half-an-hour without seeing them. A guy that was there told me where they were - about 25 metres downstream, but there was a barrier like a fence preventing me from going there. The platypus are generally very shy and so I respected the property owner's wishes and remained at the viewing seat. The creek was low and flowing slowly, and through my binoculars I could see mud being stirred up from the bottom, but never caught sight of the animal.
That night we had thunder and lightning, and torrential rain. It was still raining at dawn, but had eased off an hour later and the sun was making an effort to appear. I went back to the creek to find it swollen, muddy and fast-flowing. I figured the platypus would probably be spending time in their burrow in the bank. Some birds had flown down to drink on the opposite bank so I tried to get photos of them, but it was too dark. And then, while I'm looking up and down the creek, this platypus surfaced directly below me, swimming upstream against the current. When he reached the rock he stopped on it for a few seconds for a scratch, then slipped underwater again and vanished. All up, I probably had 15-20 seconds worth of prime monotreme viewing from a distance of 2-3 metres.
Absolutely stoked!
And even though it was darkish, and the platypus was moving, I still managed to get a couple of semi-decent photos.
that's great. All my photos of wild platypus turn out looking like they could double for Loch Ness Monster photos (as in "no, honest, that is a platypus!")
