Common Wombat, Vombatus ursinus

Wombat, as depicted in "An account of the English colony in New South Wales, from its first settlement in January 1788 to August 1801", David Collins, 1804.

David Collins (1754–1810) arrived at Botany Bay on 20 January 1788, aboard HMS Sirius. As deputy judge advocate, he proved to be one of the most perceptive chroniclers of the penal colony. Collins returned to England in 1796 with a rich hoard of observations that became the basis of "An account of the English colony in New South Wales". David Collins’ book provided a wide-ranging history of the colony’s first years, including descriptions of the unique animals encountered.

Some of the plates in Collins’ account were based on sketches by Thomas Watling, a trained artist convicted and transported for forgery; the engravings were hand-coloured by artists in England. Many of the images were awkwardly executed, demonstrating just how foreign Australia’s marsupials and monotremes appeared to Europeans.