Queensland's burrowing bettongs… where old news is gut news

The Burrowing Bettong Bettongia lesueur (Quoy and Gaimard 1824) has not previously been recorded from Queensland, although its past presence in all other mainland Australian states (excluding Victoria) is well documented. New evidence linking 11 old unregistered Queensland Museum study skins to 13 incorrectly identified skulls, and archival correspondence relating to an 1885 collection trip, made by museum collector Kendall Broadbent to Charleville, confirms that Burrowing Bettongs were once a part of Queensland's marsupial fauna. While old burrows attributable to B. lesueur are not uncommon in south-western Queensland, unconfirmed reports from the mid 1990s of “football-sized wallabies bouncing off the dingo fence” by kangaroo shooters operating there, throw the 1885 records into a modern context worthy of investigation.