Karlee: Good morning everybody. Welcome to the National Library of Australia for our Peculiar Parents Science Week Special. We're thrilled to have you with us. Hello. Hello. I my name is Karlee and we have some special guests with us today. We have the wonderful author, Stephanie Owen reader. And we have the incredible illustrator Ingrid Bartkowiak. Now we are joining from the National Library of Australia. We are going to be reading some of the book.  

We're going to be learning about animals. We'll also be improving our drawing within groups and heading across to Mulligans Flat Woodland Sanctuary to make some very cute fairy creatures. At the National Library, we acknowledge the First Australians as the traditional owners and custodians of the land that we're privileged to work on. We pay respects to their elders, past and present, and through them to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.  

Now, Ingrid, you were not here in the studio with us. Could you share, please? Where are you joining from today?  

Ingrid: I'm joining from the lands of the Jagera and Turrbal people, from Meanjin/Brisbane.  

Karlee: Thank you. Now we've got lots and lots of people joining. So teachers, or if you're learning from home today, you can use the Q&A. Now Stephanie, I know we've got people from all over Australia in every state.  

We have North Ainslie primary school grade ones and year fives. Hello. We have a school in Sydney where every single student is registered to be learning with us this Science Week. So welcome to all of you. And there are also students and going to want to go learning about ecosystems and are joining to learn with us today. I can see that we have people from Darrawul country.  

We have one K from Hurstville Primary School. Hello to you. It is so wonderful to see you all in here today. Now, Ingrid and Stephanie, how did this book come to be?  

Stephanie: Well, I was working on another book about the census and how Australian animals use their senses, and I kept finding all this amazing information about their mating habits and how they raised their young. And as an author, you're always collecting information for the next book while you're working on the book that you're working on at the moment. And so I put it aside because I knew one day it'd make a great book.  

Once I'd finished the other book, I put together a proposal to the National Library wonderful publishing arm, and they said yes, which is always nice for an author.  

Now.  

The big problem I had was that I'd found about, Well, there was 145 animals in the other book, and for this book I had to only include 60. And that was really, really hard because there's so many amazing Australian animals out there. So once I got those 60, I researched them in books and scientific papers and online and double checked everything again and again, because it's really important with a science book like this, to get the facts just right and to read the most up to date material, because scientists are always doing more research and finding out more things.  

Then the last step was to write, rewrite and edit the text, and then add the manuscript and some reference images that I'd collected along the way, or went off to our super talented illustrator, Ingrid Bartkowiak.  

Ingrid: Yeah. And so then I received Stephanie's amazing words. It got to research stage for me, which I love going to the museum, to libraries, looking online. If I'm very lucky, I can see the animals in real life if I'm in the right area, or if there's a wildlife sanctuary nearby, and then I start sketching. I send those to the publisher.  

They all go, yep. Or they might say, let's do this, or let's do that. And that's then how the illustrations come to be.  

Karlee: Thank you so much, Ingrid. And we will be looking at some of those beautiful illustrations right now, because I believe, Stephanie, you've picked out a few of your favourites of these peculiar parents that you've researched. Would you please tell us a little about it?  

Stephanie: All right. Now, one, when I'm doing my research, one of the ways that I decide what to include in my books is if when I'm finding out about them, I go, oh, do they really do that? Yeah. That is so gross. Oh, wow. That is amazing. Oh, no, I didn't know that. So that's the sort of thing that makes me think this is the sort of stuff I've got to put in the book, because I reckon if I think it's peculiar or disgusting or amazing or weird, they knew my readers will have the same reaction and want to know more about them.  

So I'm very lucky that in my long lifetime I have managed to see about half of the animals that are in my book, either in the wild or, in zoos. If, for example, I have a certain ballerina nesting in my backyard. And so it's good to find out more about them. And I'm going to read from the book now so that you can find out more about them too.  

So it's titled boasting bower birds with their iridescent blue black feathers and violet eyes, male satin bowed the it's a natural show offs during the breeding season, they weave a two sided tunnel or bower out of twigs and grasses. The males decorate their bellies with flowers, feathers and berries. That's blue objects they might have collected from people's backyards, including my pegs.  

From the line, the green gray females saunter past the bowers, checking out the males dancing in front of them. Each female then chooses the male she thinks is the coolest dancer with the best built ballet and the prettiest presents. So. Oh, and one more thing about them. Once they have mated, the female set in bowerbird builds a nest in a tree while the male goes off and redecorate his bower to attract more females.  

So the poor female has to do all the hard work, and it has spent. I've also, learned things about the wombat that I didn't know before. So I'll just find the wombat in the book. And they had demon diggers, the bear nosed wombats, built for digging. They have short, powerful legs, sharp claws, and round bodies that make it easy for them to roll onto their sides while they're digging their hole.  

Their burrows are up to 20m long, with a network of tunnels, many entrances and sleeping quarters. The nursery nests for their joeys, aligned with grass and leaf litter to make them soft and comfy. And each burrow houses several wombats. They stay there during the day and come out to forage for food at night. And luckily for the babies, wombat pouches face backwards so they don't fill up with dirt.  

When mum is renovating her burrow and the baby doesn't get dirt in its face.  

Karlee: It's so smart.  

Stephanie: I know Nature is very smart  

Okay, let's see what else there up.  

So while reading researching the book, I was struck by how many animals mate for life and how tender and caring many of them are with their babies. For example, much to my surprise, one of the most tender mothers is the saltwater crocodile. She got her nest for three months, gently carrying her hatchlings in her mouth down to the water for their very first swim.  

And then she lets them ride around on her head. But other animals are not so caring, including the green sea turtle. So let's find out about them. Where they are. I'm a big book with them animals in it. All right, buried treasure. Every year, green sea turtles swim up to 2500km to reach the nesting grounds where they were born.  

At a long life ago, isn't it? After making at sea, the females come ashore, dig a hole in the sand above the high tide mark, and lay around 100 eggs. The mother turtle covers her eggs with sand and pecks it down firmly. And then she uses her friend Fitbits to refill the pit she has made and throws them in all directions.  

So the nest is hard for predators to find. She nest every two weeks over several months before heading back into the water. Her young all hatch on the same night. So all the little baby turtles come out at the same time that dig their way out of the sand, and they scurry down to the sea where sadly, they have to fend for themselves.  

And unfortunately, it is thought that as few as 1 in 1000 green sea turtle hatchlings survive to adulthood and produce babies of their own. Sometimes it's sad out there and in the animal world. And surprisingly, the very few.  

Cute one can.  

Can be quite ruthless with her baby. When confronted by a predator to something I didn't know. A month after mating, the female quokka gives birth to just one Joey the size of a grain of rice. It makes its way into her pouch, where it attaches to her teeth. But Joey stays. It's safe and snug for about six months.  

Once it's developed fur, it picks out of the pouch. You could see it looking so cute in Ingrid's illustration that nibbles on solid food and smiles at two tourists. If a quack, a mum with a well-developed baby feels threatened, though, she can relax the muscles in her pouch and her Joey topples out. The ejected Joey hisses, which distracts the predator, giving the mother and hopefully her baby time to stay calm.  

And also, quokka mums, dads and babies appear to be smiling. For especially for tourists who will like to get, you know, photos of them. But it's just the way their faces happen to be made. The the muscles pull the little mouth up. It makes them look like this morning. I'm sure the baby isn't smiling when it's thrown out of the pouch.  

There are a lot of small, peculiar, weird, and amazing facts for you to discover in this book. Here's a few of my other favourites.  

Giant cuttlefish change the colour of their skin to attract a mate. They also have blue blood, three hearts, and a big brain. And apparently very clever.  

When mating, Australian frogs make lots of weird sounds, including plants. Like a banjo. It's one that blooms like a motorbike. There's also one that.  

And another that cackles like a wicked witch. And there's even a quacking for. So listen very carefully. At night in the backyard to see what sort of frog you have in your backyard. And one of my other favourite is that the milk of the humpback whale. It's the consistency of toothpaste. And that's so it doesn't float away in the water while the calf is feeding.  

Isn't nature clever?  

Karlee: It sure is. Oh my goodness. Well, I think that students will have a lot of fun finding out more facts. A little peculiar to parents. For our next activity, we're going to work on our research skills. So we're going to head to Mulligans Flat Woodland Sanctuary. Now, where you can hear from an ecologist and maybe your teachers might be taking a few notes on the whiteboard.  

Or maybe you just want to pop them straight into the Q&A. We'll discuss them together. But we do hope that you enjoy hearing all about these fantastic creatures.  

Dr Belinda Wilson: Hi, I'm Dr Belinda Wilson. I'm an ecologist here at Mulligan's Flat Woodland Sanctuary and I'm working on the Pookila Recovery Project here on Ngunnawal Country.  

Mulligan's Flat Woodland Sanctuary is a bit like a national park, but with a big fence around the outside to keep out foxes and cats and keep our native species safe, like the Pookila.  

These mice are sometimes called New Holland Mouse, but we like to use the First Nations name, which is Pookila, which is from the Ngarigo language.  

Over several generations, we brought up the largest captive population in the world. We then wanted to see whether they would survive in the wild at Mulligan's Flat, and it turns out they can.  

Dean: Hi, my name is Dean and I'm the Wildlife Project Officer here at Mulligan's Flat. Let's go see some mice.  

All right. We're just going to open this up.  

Hopefully they'll be a little sleepy.  

So, if you look in their eyes comparing them to a house mouse, you can see their eyes are much bigger.  

So, and the house mouse actually has very squinty eyes. They don't actually open up that much.  

But these guys have much bigger eyes. And also looking at their ears, the ears are a little bit bigger as well. And they also don't smell like a house mouse.  

They don't have that musky smell.  

Dr Belinda Wilson: Pookila like to live in bushy, shrubby places with lots of hidey holes for them to forage in and to hide in. Pookila mums are incredible. They can give birth to up to, five little pups at a time. And they each the size of a grain of rice. And she then raises them up into tiny little versions of the adults.  

Pookila like to eat a lot of things. They mostly like seeds, so the seeds that you might find on native grasses, but they also will have shoots, so fresh greens and occasionally they might eat an insect or two.  

Dean:  They're like the gardeners of the ecosystem. So they run around, they dig little holes and they spread around all the little seeds in the bush, and that helps regenerate the bush. We call them little ecosystem engineers.  

Dr Belinda Wilson: Before our project, there was no one alive who had seen a Pookila in the wild in the ACT and the reason for that is predation by foxes and cats as well as habitat destruction. We didn't realise that Pookila used to live in this area until scientists found their bones in our pellets in caves.  

That meant that we knew that we could bring them back to this area and it be like returning them home.  

Thanks so much for hanging out with us and learning about the peculiar recovery here at Mulligan's Flat Woodland Sanctuary.  

Karlee: You see lots of ideas coming through about those pookila in particular, people saying how cute they are. But also about their diet. So I wonder if you noticed that they ate same, maybe an insect or two. Not cheese. And someone has worked out very well done. Someone is also asking what are they? Predators. So carnivores. Foxes.  

Unfortunately, but also in the native predators quotes and birds of prey. Well Kyra as well. And you've been very clever. I noticed Natalia has has realized that they have bigger eyes and ears than a half mouth. That's a really important feature, so that you can identify a particular. And. Abby, thank you. You noticed they are very cute engineers.  

Thank you very much. Now, Ingrid, you need to do a lot of really careful observation of the animals before creating your drawings. I wonder if we get our students to get their pencils and paper ready. Would you do some drawing with us? So we'll do. I can see Ingrid is getting ready now. We are going to do a little bit of drawing along with Ingrid.  

There will be a mystery animal. And we also have Billie in our studio. Who's going to learn to draw this mystery animal as well? All right. Very ready, I hope.  

Ingrid: So. Today we're going to do a quick sketch drawing. A mystery animal. So as I draw, I'm going to be describing all the different features of this animal using some of the words in the book, too, so you can see what an illustrator might consider when working from text to artwork so you can follow along with your pencil.  

As I'm drawing and describing our animal, see if you can guess what it is. So to start with, I like to map in some very light guidelines for me so that I know sort of roughly the shape of my animals body. So very lightly with your pencils, you can draw outside. The body of our animal is quite long, almost like, imagine if an egg got really stretched, or if you had a rubber band that got stretched out a little bit so long like this.  

And then our animal's head is almost a squarish sort of shape, but it's rounded. So in between, like a square and a circle. So that gives us our guidelines for our animal's shape. Next, I'd like to give our animal something to sit on so that it's not just floating on the page. I know this animal likes to sit on hollow tree branches, and I'll just draw in a bit of a shape.  

So down the bottom we still want a bit of the body poking through underneath the branch. For now, I'm just mapping in that main shape of the branch, and we'll add some more details later. Now this animal has what looks like a pretty crazy hairdo, but it's actually called a crest. It's big and feathery and spiky looking, so I'm going to add in a bit of a punk rocker hairdo.  

Now you can make your spikes different heights and different lengths because this, this animal really is rocking a crazy head, a hairstyle. Next up, this animal. This animal has a large strong beak, which it uses to crack open nuts and strip small branches off trees. Let's have a go adding this in. So we're going to do a hook at the top, nice and big.  

And then attach it to the head and then down the bottom much smaller. We've got the little bottom part of the beak. You might also want to add in a little cheeky tongue poking out in between.  

Now just across from the beak is the animal's eye. So we're going to be drawing in an eye.  

And this animal also has a little red cheek patch. So connecting from the eye. Sorry. From the beak to the eye. And then coming down onto the eye and then attaching to the bottom of the beak, almost like it's put some blush on. Do you think you can guess what animal we're drawing yet? Let's add some definition to the body shape.  

So I'm going to use those guidelines that we put in earlier. And start drawing in darker around the shape of the body. Now this animal has big wings which it flaps when it's trying to attract a mate. However, in our drawing today, its wings are tucked away. So we're just going to draw. That wing tucked next to its body.  

Moving down. Our animal has big claws so it can hold on to the branch. Let's draw these in. So we've got one, two, three on one side. And one. Two, three on the other side. Underneath the branch. Let's draw in a V shape. The base of the animal's body. And one of the last features of our animal is its lovely black feathered tail. So I'm going to draw in two main feathers coming down. And you can see they're sort of like a big long rectangle with a rounded base and another one on the other side, and I'll draw in a few feathers tucked behind.  

Now we can add in a little bit of detail. So something that I find as helpful is once I've drawn in my animal, I can sort of see what might need tweaking. So I actually think I can make his hair even bigger and crazier. Because I can see the rest of the size of his body. And I'm also starting to shade in.  

That lovely, these lovely black feathers that our animal has.  

And you might also like to add in some more definition into your branch.  

Maybe there's a little bit of a bark texture.  

Some texture to the feathers.  

And so when I'm drawing for the picture book, this might be the loose scribbly sketch that I start with. And I then go back and keep practicing and refining the sketch and adding in more detail. But this is a good way just to get started with mapping those shapes. And then we build our animal from that. So have we guessed our animal?  

It's the palm cockatoo. And in the book you'll see he's a bit of a rock and roller. He likes to hold on to a little branch or sort of stick and bang it against the hollow log to attract a mate. Here we go.  

Karlee: I thank you so much, Ingrid. Look at that palm cockatoo. Billie, can we see your palm cockatoo as well? Beautiful. Wow. Ingrid, I'll let you know that while he was drawing, lots of people in our session were saying that I love drawing to. One of the question was, how are you so good at drawing now? I imagine that you weren't born just being able to draw a realistic palm cockatoo. How did you get to that point?  

Ingrid: Yeah, no, it's, I've always found the drawing part to be the hardest, so I always really liked painting. But I found drawing was a lot harder. And so this book here is actually where I was doing all the sketches for Peculiar Parents. And you can see they start off here, our cockatoo here, they start off quite scribbly and then they get more defined as like, all right.  

So I've just had found over the years, the more I practice and the more I look at the animals, the better I get with my observational skills. I still feel like I've got a long way to learn. I still feel like I make mistakes, but it's just about persevering with it because I didn't find drawing easy.  

Not like I.  My older sister's always wanted it. So keep practicing and observing. I found it really helpful to go to museums and see, you know, the size of the animals there. Yes. All that sort of stuff.  

Karlee: You can see that this is the the result that's actually in the book.  

Now, in the Q&A, we are noticing lots of people started to work out. It was a cockatoo. It could be a Major Mitchell cockatoo, a sulfur-crested, but absolutely it's the palm cockatoo. Could you please give us, Stephanie, one peculiar fact that, you know about the palm cockatoo?  

Stephanie: Well, I think the rock and roll cockatoos of the world, the Malcolm cockatoo, he strips small branches of trees and he uses its incredibly strong beak to shape them into drumsticks. So he actually makes drumsticks. He holds the drumstick in his claw. He beats in a steady rhythm against a hollow tree, and he creates his own tune.  

So each one has its own tune, and then the female chooses the, the one that she thinks is the best drummer.  

Or, the most rock and roll and cockatoo wobble.  

Karlee: Fantastic, using music to attract, and attract to mate. Fantastic. And now we have Ingrid. I'm going to pop your beautiful pictures away for now. And we are going to hear some fantastic questions. I know that there are a lot of questions. But. Oh, Ingrid, I just wanted to make sure that, you know, that a lot of people were really impressed with your use of guidelines, and that was a really terrific thing to see.  

That's a good way to establish scale, but also to show that you understand the habitat. So you're using that branch as a guideline also helps. Sure. That you've researched the habitat of both animals. Fantastic. And Reece, I think that Ingrid should publish that during as well. So I do you know what she did ask me, Stephanie. She has she's published it as well as many, many others in it.  

Parents. One of the questions that we've had is around other books that you have published.  

Stephanie: The book that actually started the whole animal thing was a book called Australia's Wild, Weird, Wonderful Weather, which was published by the National Library. And there was a double page spreading that called Animal Antics. And, I did research on how animals, you know, sensed changes in weather and how they cope with, you know, floods and storms and bushfires and things like that.  

And so that got me interested in, you know, Australian animals and, how they, they function in their environment. And so since then, I've written Swifty the Courier Parrot about the endangered swift parrot, Rikali of the River bank, about the wonderful, native Australian native water rat who is a sort of, ecological superstar. And, another one called Sensational Australian Animals, which is the one where this one came from, which has 145 Australian animals and how they use their senses.  

And there's some very weird things in that book. It's weird ones in that one of the coolest ones. It's fun. So yes. So I think I've got five now, all with an animal theme. I've got to be hooked.  

I think it's a great topic so much.  

Karlee: Do we all love animals? Yes, yes. Thank you for all the questions here. Okay, so  Partridge has a question from three/four. What is the most interesting animal that you have ever researched for a book?  

Stephanie: I think one of them was, because it's so many. I mean, I've done over 200 animals in those two books. But one of the ones I like was the parrot fish. And, parrot fish obviously lives in the water. It's a very weird looking thing with a beak. It's got teeth, thousands of teeth all in its mouth.  

Karlee: And right down its throat. It eats coral, which is really high. And when the coral comes out the other end, it's sand. And so you could be building a sandcastle with parrot poop. Parrot fish. Poop?  

Stephanie: I mean, who knew?  

Karlee: Well, now we all do.  

Stephanie: Well, you know that now. Yeah.  

Karlee: Adds another dimension to everything. Thank you. And what about you, Ingrid? What's the most interesting animal that you found to illustrate?  

Stephanie: Oh, well, very quickly, I just want to say we recently were up in the Great Barrier Reef, and I got to hear the sound the parrotfish make when they're crunching on the coral. Because when you're pulling in, your ears are under the water. You can kind of hear these, but I can't make the sound because I'm not a parrot fish, but, you know, and we we did see a lot of them swimming around.  

Ingrid: But. Yeah, but going back to your question, gosh, I don't even know how to choose. They're all so interesting, especially Stephanie's selection. I enjoy painting things that I probably would never have painted, like the Stinkbug, and the little babies underneath. Yeah. So I think it was getting to do these unusual things that you wouldn't usually choose.  

Karlee: Thank you from NAPS year five and see which animals eat the baby turtles. As you said. You mentioned that it's something.  

Stephanie: Them like evolved that. Yes. The, the birds obviously. So there's birds all come around when the little babies are coming out. And once they get so they get, they get attacked from above and below because once they get in the water, there's fish that eat them and sharks and and whatever else is big enough to eat baby turtles.  

So, yes, it's not surprising that they. Learn a lot, and there's no mommy or daddy around to look after them, very sadly.  

But that's why, like so many eggs, so that there's a chance for some of them to survive and keep, on producing. Oh, it's great sea turtles.  

Karlee: Thank you. Thank you for people thinking about the creatures and actually live in their own backyard. Many people do have frogs in their backyard. They've seen about birds in their backyard. We might have time for a couple more questions. Stephanie, when did you first publish a book?  

Stephanie: 1997. It was a book called The Flaming Witch. Like my first children's books.  

I've, most of my books have been published in the last 20 years, and I think I'm up to 30 books.  

Karlee: Wow.  

Stephanie: So I've been busy. Yeah, I loved it. So that's what I.  

Karlee: And what about you, Ingrid? When was the first time that a book was published with your artwork?  

Ingrid: I guess the. So I used to when I was in, primary school, I used to like making books. I don't know if that counts, but my friend and I, she wrote a book, and I did illustrations in year seven, and we gave it to our school librarian when we graduated. So I guess that was our first venture into picture books.  

But, there's also Necropolis, which came out a few years ago now. That's about following the aunt, and seeing what you can find in, in urban environments. But I'm much newer to this then. Obviously Stephanie has this wonderful, history of books. So it was a really big honour to paint for Stephanie's beautiful words.  

Stephanie: Oh.  

Karlee: Thank you. Well, a lot of young people wonder. They've done my research. They've got a fantastic idea. How long does it actually take to go from that initial idea to getting a beautiful publication published?  

Stephanie: This one was quite fast.  

Ingrid: It was.  

Stephanie: Very. I think I signed the contract in July last year, and it came out in July this year. So that, I mean, I got done a lot of research. And so I went to the contract with sign, and I knew I could just get it written quickly. And, and Ingrid did an amazing job getting 60 and 120 illustrations.  

She did for this book, which is just amazing. But some of my books have taken, you know, three years from when I've had the idea, to when they've actually come out as a book. So. And when they do it, it's like having a baby, you know, when I get the book for the publisher, the first thing I do is hug it, because you put so much of yourself into writing your book and illustrating it.  

Ingrid: Yeah, I was, I've never illustrated anything so fast. There was one part of the summer holidays that I was literally having to get an painting done a day, to meet the deadline, but it was a good challenge. And, I feel like I got faster at painting because of this book.  

Karlee: Will end with this final question for you both. Were thinking about ways to care for these animals that we're learning about. So Natalia has a fantastic question. My end on Ingrid will start with you. What is your favourite endangered animal that you think we should really look out for?  

Ingrid: I think, well, interconnected, I guess is the bogan mouse and the mountain pygmy possum. I think it's a really interesting sort of when you think about the way that species are connected. So the bogan moss, migrates, and it's the food source for the mountain pygmy possum when it, what's the word wakes up from hibernation?  

But yeah, I think that's a really interesting one to, to look into. And it's in the book as well. The mountain pygmy possum. Yeah.  

Karlee: What about you, Stephanie?  

Stephanie: Working on a book at the moment about, the Gration glider, which must be the most cutest of Australian animals because they've got these great big. These look like Katy berries with silk in them, and they're really fluffy, and they have long, long tails. And when they sit on a branch together, they sometimes intertwine their tails and they are, very endangered because they, they have multiple dens in, in old growth forests and they so they need hollow logs.  

They can't they camp, they can't, keep their temperature at the right temperature unless they've got the hollow logs to hide in. And of course, there's a lot of logging going on, and you know that their habitat is disappearing. And so, I mean, change it. So. And they're just so cute.  

Ingrid: They are.  

Karlee: Well, thank you so much to everyone for joining us. It has been an absolute pleasure to join from the National Library of Australia, and we really hope that you will continue your scientific research, think about ways to observe the features of those animals, but also ways to take care if they have to take very long to survive through. All right, we will say goodbye for now. It has been an absolute joy to have so many people across Australia learning with us. Okay, we’ll say goodbye.