And the winner is … naming competition for baby bilby

19 December 2018

The baby bilby who emerged recently from his mother’s pouch at the Ipswich Nature Centre has been named.

Meet Mudlo.

Ipswich City Council called for community suggestions to help name the bilby, with the top two suggestions put to a public vote on Facebook.

Amy Millar suggested Mudlo, which means stone in Yagara Language, and a nod to the name of the bilby’s father, Quartz. Yagara Language is the traditional language spoken in the Ipswich Region.

Amy Miller suggested the name with Ipswich’s heritage in mind and it proved very popular with voters.

“I thought it would be nice to link the Indigenous heritage of the area and I thought there was a nice link to the father, whose name is Quartz,” she said.

“It’s such a lovely thing to have the name I suggested chosen. We are really lucky to have the conservation program here. I am so proud and proud of Ipswich too.

“The bilby is special in our family. When we were young, we celebrated with the Easter bilby, not bunny. My mum also wrote a children’s book which featured a bilby. He looks like such a sweet little bilby,” she said.

Gloria Parkes was the other finalist with her suggestion: ‘Rudie the red nose bilby’.

“I’m delighted to be a finalist, I will call him Rudie anyway,” Ms Parkes laughed.

“When I was a child in the 1960s, my father worked in timber. Every now and then he would bring home a bilby and we would put it in the chook pen.  After a couple of weeks they would dig out and away he’d go. It was always so exciting when dad would come home with a ‘kangaroo rat’ as we called them at the time.”

Senior Zoologist Nicole Richards said she was pleased with the baby bilby’s new name.

“He is a special little guy and this is a special name. I think the community have chosen well,” she said.

The Ipswich Nature Centre has a world class bilby breeding enclosure. Mudlo is part of the National Recovery Plan for the species.

Ipswich Nature Centre at Queens Park is open seven days a week during the school holidays from 9.30am to 4pm. It is closed Christmas Day.

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