This wood engraving by Gerard Krefft of a Western Barred Bandicoot was the result of an historic scientific expedition to north west Victoria in 1857. Museum Victoria's first curator William Blandowski led the remarkable survey to the junction of the Murray and Darling rivers and set up camp at Mondellimin (now known as Chaffey's Landing), just eight kilometres west of the centre of the city of Mildura in Victoria. The expedition dispatched more than 17,000 specimens to Melbourne and, unlike the ill fated Burke and Wills expedition that followed in 1860, the entire party returned alive. Blandowski's gifted assistant on the expedition, Gerard Krefft, documented their findings and illustrated a number of species, including the Western Barred Bandicoot. This species is now endangered with a declining population and can only be found today on the islands of Barrow and Dorre. The last record of the species on the Australian mainland was in 1922.
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