Wombats
The most cuboid animal on the planet.Our first encounter with a Wombat was when Siân was asked to hold one in an animal sanctuary and collapsed under a bundle of fur. Better still was seeing them in the wild at the foot of Tasmania's Cradle Mountain. Watching the brown bundles snuffing through button grass was just amazing.

Kangaroos
Crazy as it sounds if you don't know what you are looking for, kangaroos can be quite hard to spot. Often they are lying down, sheltering from the midday sun, so you have to look not for big-footed bouncers but for small twitching ears at ground level. Of-course if they have already spotted you, they will be jumping away so sighting them is no problem.

Possum
We made friends with a couple of possums who lived in the trees outside our flat in St Kilda, Melbourne. Mum and Oaf-child would clamber along the fence just after pub closing which was when we would meet up. Oaf-child would then worry Mum by repeatedly falling off the fence. She was understandably stressed as the cat below had an unhealthy interest in possums.

Tassie Devil
Poor devils. They look like the runts of the animal kingdom and sound evil. Hence the name no doubt. Apparently they are unfairly named - they only eat the wounded or dying.

Kookaburra
These fat birds not so much sit on the old gum tree but on the old telephone wire or fence. They are the biggest member of the kingfisher family but despite their size you are more likely to hear their hyena laugh long before you see them. They laugh out most times they land which makes them pretty noisy.

Echidna
Spikey and round like a hedgehog but with a long anteater-like snout. So far we have seen two types of echidna.The first was Tasmania's bushy version - it has fewer prickles and more fur to keep out the cold. The second was Australia's very prickly version. The wierdest thing about them are thier backwards-pointing backfeet which may explain why they wobble a lot when they walk.

Koala
The best piece of advice we've had on koala spotting was at Tower Hill National Park in Victoria. The friendly park ranger told us not to look for movement in the trees but for lumps. Sure enough we saw heaps of dozy bears high in the trees. This lazy marsupial sleeps most of the day moving for around only four hours each daywhen it pigs out on eucalyptus leaves.

Goanna
If you see one of these scaly beasts and you're the tallest thing around - lie down. When scared goannas will climb the highest object around using their extremely sharp claws to do so. Luckily, this critter in Willadah was not phased by the sight of Paul's lens.

Pelican
Big mouthy birds.

Eagle - Wedgetail Eagle
Eagles are a very special bird for the Koorie people - the aboriginal people of south-east Victoria. Bunjil created the world and all that is in it. When he was happy with it, he watched it for a while from his shelter in Gariwerd - the Grampians. Then, deciding to entrust the world's care to the Bram Bram Brook brothers, Bunjil took to the skies as an eagle until he eventually turned into a star. Sometimes he still takes the form of an eagle and soars overhead, watching his world.

Emu
The Koorie myth of south-eastern Victoria holds that emus were once twice the size they are now. There was once a monster emu who roamed around eating people and destroying the land. Thankfully the Bram Bram Brook brothers killed the emu and spilt its feathers in half, making the emus of today the five foot they are now and giving them a plumage of strangely split feathers.

Tree Frog
A better name for this cold critterwould be the dunny frog. In outback loos across Australia these pesky amphibians are apparently very common. This one startled a sleepy Paul one morning as he went to use the dunny at Willadah.

Wallaby
In every way like a kangaroo but half the size and often twice as fluffy. We saw this one and his friend chasing beach tumbleweed on Hazards Beach, Freycinet, Tasmania. They also seem to love the campsites of Australia's national parks.

Yabbies
Yabbies are amazing little lobster like critters that manage to survive even in drough-ridden outback Australia. They can walk for miles in seach of water so often end up in the dug-out damns or water tanks on farms. We caught these two in a damn we had been swimming in earlier. To combat their naturally muddy taste the trick is to put them in salt water for an hour or so - so we've been told.

Tiger Snake
"Snake!" I whispered flinging a protective arm at Paul but actually smashing his camera into his chest. Alas the snake had heard me and four foot of yellow-flecked thick black pipe russled swiftly into the undergrowth. Our first wild Aussie snake - how poisonous would he be? Very - speaking to people afterwards confirmed it was the fantastic but fearsome tiger snake.

Huntsman Spider
Amazingly out first huntsman was not a horrific arachnaphobic's nightmare. We spotted one ambling along the hallway outside our apartment in Melbourne. A docile thing that certainly did not live up to its name - so much so that we were not sure it was a huntsman. This more impressive one lives outside our friends' - Mandy and Stef - home in Mona Vale, Sydney.

Golden Orb Weaver Spider
"The best way to kill them is by squashing the round bit of thier bodies, then they can't make any webs and die!" This gruesome bit of advice from 11 year-old Jake from Sydney's Lane Cove Caravan Park is particularly nasty as golden orb weaver spiders are magnificent spinners. They weave huge strong webs in which this sit waiting for dinner.The whoppers - about 10cm long - are the female of the species which, from a bug's point of view, is definitely more deadly than the male.

Eastern Water Dragon
We first saw these spikey lizards at Sydney's Chinese Gardens - appropriately enough. Like most lizards they love to bask, but these wet warriors are as happy lying on a rock as they are submerged in water.

Terrapin
The Chinese Gardens were also home to this little chap.

Sacred Ibis
Sydney is full of Ibises. Along with pigeons, crows and Indian miner birds, they are the city's opportunists, scavaneging for scraps where-ever they may be. Their long beaks do give them the advantage though, as they can poke deep into the bins, pulling out crisp packets, empty sandwich boxes and sweet wrappers.

Flying Fox
Big, beautiful but not good in a botanical garden. Flying foxes are one of the largest type of bat in the world and they are so named because of their dear little fox-like faces. Both Melbourne and Sydney's botanical gardens are home to thousands of the winged critters, where they sleep during the day flying off to the fruit farms to feed at night. Sadly though the gardens don't want them as they damage the trees they roost in.

Bull Ant
A ferious member of the ant world. This is a bull ant, a nasty beast whose bite hurts horrendously and can kill those who are allergic to it. We almost camped on a nest of them but were luckily warned about them by some friendly Tasmanians - at the aptly named Friendly Beaches camp ground. Although we are no ant experts, from pictures we've seen of them the extent of red on their body would seem to vary depending on where in Oz they live.

Indian Miner Bird
Sadly these plucky birds aren't much liked in Australia. It has something to them being non-native invaders which, when you think about it, is not a reason that can be used credibly by most Aussies. Always in pairs and ready to have a go at other birds, cats and dogs who annoy them, they are spreading throughout Australia. A pair did make it to Tasmania but they and their nest were destroyed on arrival at the island state.

Native Miner Bird
These birds are much dantier than their robust relatives. While they might begrudge sharing food they remain happy to share the same stylist, with yellow eyeliner still being this season's look.

Humpback Whale
We were lucky enough to spot these huge 60 ton whales just off the Sydney coast as they were migrating north towards Queensland.

Lyre Bird
We saw this beautiful dancing critter in the Blue Mountains. It was June, the beginning of their mating season so Mr Lyre Bird was busy trying to wow the shyer and quieter Ms Lyre Bird. As well as a good deal of tail feather shuffling, Mr Lyre Bird also pulls the birds by doing a few impressions of the other birds in the bush including currawongs and kookaburras. Even in the bird world, the ladies love a comedian. Audio / Video

Pied Currawongs
Currawongs seem to love mountains and forests. So it's not surprising the national park at Cradle Mountain in Tasmania makes heavy use of the currawong in its literature. These big birds make a beautifully distinctive call which sounds somewhere between a coiled spring being released and a flute. Yep - you need to hear it yourselves. We saw this pair of the pied variety at New South Wales' Blue Mountains.

Sugar Glider
There we were, the only ones in the Euroka National Park in New South Wales cooking up a tin of Carbonara (we're classy campers us) in the dark, when suddenly there was this almighty cackle and crash in the branches above us. The chuckling critter then launched itself again flinging itself to another tree. Was it a bird? was it a bat? No. It was a glider - a kind of possum with wings.