Lobster in your letterbox!

Australia Post have released stamps depicting Australian freshwater crayfish.

Astacopsis gouldi is featured

Lobster stamp
Australia Post $1 stamp

So, find an excuse to write a letter

  • write to an old person (they love that)
  • pay a bill by post (to annoy your utility provider)
  • complain to your council (that’s what they are there for)
  • harass your local MP to protect riparian habitat (regardless of who they are, they aren’t doing enough!)

Jeremy Wade meets lutaralipina

Jeremy Wade of ‘River Monsters’ fame comes to Tasmania in search of the giant freshwater crayfish.  It’s fun watching him hunt for it in all the wrong places. Jeremy then visits the Allport Library & Museum  to see WB Gould’s 1832 painting of Astacopsis tricornis and to read Charles Gould’s 1870 paper about how the lobster and blakfish “cohabitate”.  Todd Walsh finally helps him out. It’s a real shame they didn’t mention the Aboriginal name…

Picture: Discovery Channel, Dark Waters Episode 5, Jurassic River Beast

The story of lutaralipina (not tayatea) and Charles Gould (not William Buelow Gould) revealed!

Terry Mulhern’s paper on the misconceptions about the names given to lutaralipina – the giant freshwater crayfish – is published in the Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania, Volume 152 . The article can’t be downloaded for free for 12 months, but read all about in the University of Melbourne’s online magazine Pursuit or in Tasmania 40°South Magazine.

Picture: Terry Mulhern. lutaralipina – Astacopsis gouldi –