When they first see the house, Mandy sees a wombat and two babies hiding in a washing basket.
Outdoor people will enjoy and be intrigued by the wombat story.
Other terrestrial marsupials are the wombat (Phascolomys), a large, clumsy, burrowing animal, not unlike a pig, which attains a weight of from 60 to 100 lb; the bandicoot (Perameles), a rat-like creature whose depredations annoy the agriculturist; the native cat (Dasyurus), noted robber of the poultry yard; the Tasmanian wolf (Thylacinus), which preys on large game; and the recently discovered Notoryctes, a small animal which burrows like a mole in the desert of the interior.
In addition to remains referable to the existing genus, the Pleistocene deposits of Australia have yielded evidence of an extinct giant wombat constituting the genus Phascolonus (Sceparnodon).
It may be added that there are some marsupials, such as the wombat, koala, marsupial ant-eater and the dasyures, FIG.