Our final stop during the 2008 trip was one day/two nights in Tasmania. It is a beautiful island with rugged mountains, rainforests, quaint old towns, and road signs you'll find nowhere else — like this one (above) featuring an Eastern Barred Bandicoot! We were hosted by my friend Murray Lord and his parents, Bruce & Gillian, whose lovely home overlooks Hobart's harbor. We saw a couple of mammals during the day, like this Tasmanian Pademelon Thylogale billardierii (right) and a Red-necked (Bennett's) Wallaby Macropus rufogriseus, but most mammals observations were at night. Among those we succeeded in seeing: Eastern Barred Bandicoot Perameles gunnii (below).

During our first night's walk with spotlights, in a little park at the local Hobart waterworks, we tallied not only the bandicoot — which is now endangered on mainland Australia and common only on Tasmania — but spotted Common Brushtailed Possum Trichasurus vulpecula in the trees (below left) and Tasmanian Pademelon on the lawns (below right). We also saw one Tasmanian Bettong Bettongia gaimardii, now restricted to eastern Tasmania with mainland populations extinct, but I didn't get a photo.

On our second night we spent several hours driving on back roads like this one (above) through the Wielangta Forest and surrounding farmland, hoping to see the Devil. The Tasmanian Devil Sarcophilus harrisii, that is. It was a cold, rainy night and we did not see any. Murray tells me, however, that a friend of his found one dead on the road in this area the next weekend. So although the world population has crashed with the spread of a facial-canker virus, there are still some present in these woods. So we did a night drive with spotlights that produced a nice tally of other marsupials: 38 Tasmanian Pademelons, 2 Tasmanian Bettongs, 2 Common Brushtailed Possums, and four Eastern Quoll Dasyurus viverrinus — the latter a much-wanted coup!

At the Lords' home in Hobart, an unexpected variety of mammals visits their backyard at night. These include Tasmanian Pademelon and Long-nosed Potoroo, a rabbit-sized hopping marsupial (above).

Perhaps most unusual was a midnight visit from the very rare golden morph of Brushtailed Possum. The Lords have kept track of the genealogy of these possums over the years. The one we saw (right & below) was brought to their window by its golden mother several years ago. That mother had been documented to bring babies born to matches with normal-colored males and a golden male. The "golden child" does not visit nightly, so we were very lucky to see it during our very short visit.