The naturalist has been something of a recurring figure in recent Australian historical fiction: there is Ingrid in Jessica White’s A Curious Intimacy (2007), Lindsay Simpson’s Lady Jane in The Curer of Souls (2007), and now the real-life William Caldwell, from Nicolas Drayson’s Love and the Platypus. The novel opens in 1883 with the young British naturalist arriving in Queensland. In search of the elusive platypus egg, he crosses overland to the Burnett River, where he sets up camp and begins his investigation.
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