David Fleay--Australian Naturalist

Color photography and movies of David Fleay




Historic Platypus Documentary featuring David Fleay--Part 1



Historic Platypus Documentary featuring David Fleay--Part 2




The commemoration of the birthday of David Fleay a world authority on various species of Australian Fauna, was held at the Healesville Sanctuary Victoria Australia in 2007. Son Stephen, put together this tribute to his dad.
David bred the first platypus in captivity and took detailed photographs and movie film of "Benjamin" the last surviving Thylacine in Tasmania in 1933. Stephen's sister Rosemary Fleay-Thomson has released a book on the life's work of this famous Australian naturalist. In this clip there is historic "marsupial wolf" footage and a special song written about David Fleay's wildlife park.

"Amazing man and film work. Back in the day, when wild life films were truly educational, before tanking into today's Animal Planet nonsense. England's greatest is Sir David Attenborough, but in my opinion one of the greatest of all time is America's Marty Stouffer."


David Fleay Wildlife Park (Department of Environment and Resource ...

David Fleay - Friends Of Fleays - Main

David Fleay - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


The New York Times--August 23, 1993

David Fleay, an Australian zoologist who was a specialist on the strange Australian animal the platypus, has died in Brisbane, Australia, the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph reported last week. He was 86.

Mr. Fleay was for some years the director of the Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary in Victoria State in southeastern Australia. In that capacity, he became a celebrity in New York in 1947 by delivering three platypuses to the Bronx Zoo, which had not had once since 1922.

Mr. Fleay's arrival was heralded by a bemused New York Times editorial that said, "David Fleay, the world's greatest authority on the platypus, is coming to New York to lecture on its odd life, and it is about time."

He once wrote affectionately that the platypus -- pronounced PLAT-uh-puhs -- "is the most famous of all Australian creatures, because of its duck-like sensitive bill, its lovely seal-like fur, the beaver-like tail, the short strong limbs with webbed feet and digging claws, the possession of a venom apparatus and hollow spurs on the ankles of the male, the laying of eggs and the suckling of young."

Platypuses live along Australian streams and grow to be 16 to 22 inches long, including 4 or 5 inches of tail.

In 1951, Mr. Fleay set up his own fauna center in Queensland, which included cassowaries, wallabies and crocodiles. He recently gave responsibility for the center to the Queensland State government.

As a conservationist, he was outspoken and, as The Daily Telegraph put it, he "strove to preserve native Australian fauna in the days when even koala bears were slaughtered in vast numbers for their fur."

Mr. Fleay was born in Ballarat, 65 miles northwest of Melbourne, Australia, studied zoology at Melbourne University and worked at the Melbourne zoo before going to work for the Healesville Sanctuary.

His writings included the 1964 book "Living With Animals."

Mr. Fleay's wife, Sigrid, died in 1987 after 56 years of marriage, and he later remarried. He had a daughter and two sons.