The Enchantment of the Long-haired Rat

The fascinating story of a much-maligned and little-understood native Australian rodent.

The long-haired rat breeds and spreads prodigiously after big rains. Its irruptions were plagues to European colonists, whofeared and loathed all rats, but times of feasting for Aboriginal people.

Tim Bonyhady explores the place of the long-haired rat in Aboriginal culture. He recounts how settler Australians responded to it, learned about it and, occasionally, came to recognise the wonder of it. And he reconstructs its changing, shrinking landscape—once filled with bilbies, letter-winged kites and inland taipans, but now increasingly the domain of feral cats.

An astonishing history, The Enchantment of the Long-haired Rat illuminates a species, a continent, its climate and its people like never before.

About the Author

Tim Bonyhady is one of Australia’s foremost environmental and cultural historians. His many books include Images in Opposition: Australian Landscape Painting 1801–1890, Burke and Wills: From Melbourne to Myth, Places Worth Keeping: Conservationists, Politics and Law, the award winning The Colonial Earth and The Enchantment of the Long-haired Rat.