Albert of Adelaide

I initially read about Albert of Adelaide (#266) by Howard L. Anderson on the GoodReads site, and I knew I wanted to read it; a platypus goes walkabout in search of the way Australia used to be.  And that's pretty much it.

Except that Albert has only one memory of his life before he wound up in the Adelaide Zoo and it's a traumatic one.  He remembers his mother being killed by a dog just before he himself is netted and captured as a zoo exhibit.  He has no companions there at the zoo, but he does hear rumors of a place where life is the way it used to be in Old Australia, and he's determined to find it one day.  Albert seizes his opportunity when someone neglects to check the latch on his enclosure.  Sometime later, the  train, which divides the Australia continent roughly in half  from Adelaide in the south to Darwin in the north, dumps Albert off in the desert north of Alice Springs with only an old soda bottle in his possession.  And so his adventures begin...

It's a simple story on one level, but as Albert searches for the place he is sure he is meant to be, he encounters kindness and cruelty, friends and enemies and lessons he never expected to learn along the way.  His memory of life in captivity in Adelaide is one he is glad to firmly shut the door on, but is life really any better out amongst the other creatures he encounters?  And how could he not have minded spending his life up until now naked?!

Life in Old Australia isn't so very different from that of the old American Wild West, but imagine it peopled (!) with wombats, bandicoots, wallabies and kangaroos, snakes and dingoes, and of course, a mysterious Tasmanian devil.  Not your usual cast of characters, especially when they come armed to the teeth with guns, clubs and rockets and notions of frontier justice.  Have I whetted your curiosity yet?

On a personal note, one of the reasons that drew me to this book was the Australian setting.  When my husband and I were hiking in Cradle Mountain National Park on Tasmania in the fall of 2011, we encountered wombat trails.  They were easy to tell because wombats are very territorial, and they mark their boundaries with feces.  Somewhere along the way, young wombats learn to poop in cubes.  So much handier to pile them up like blocks when marking their trails, and they won't roll off sloping rocks or logs.  And yes, we do have pictures.  How could you not be fascinated by a place with such diversity?

Anyway, it won't take very long to read Mr. Anderson's novel Albert of Adelaide, but you'll be entertained by the adventures, and have much to ponder after you the close the covers.  What could be more satisfactory?