“G’d arvo! Too right, cobber, it was grand in the old bush times round Wonga-Wonga, with the surprisingly loud silvery song of a little cornbrash (Pseudave luciensis) in your ears as you took the Holden over to your neighbour to see his Corallian carpet-wool mob being sheared and maybe take the oolite out of some rubber-necking raw Pom over a few tinnies. Up above would be the laughing lias birds doing their Kimmeridge turns, our feathered friends’ equivalent of Great War pilots’ Immelmann turns, as they waited to snaffle some dags for their nests. Named after that drongo who strangled the last aquatic marsupial ampthill with his bare hands when up Excrement Inlet without his Permian double-barrelled croc-croaker. Those were the days!”
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