The Wallace Line

---

The Wombat said to the Kangaroo
"Gooday my friend, and how are you?"
"I'm glad you asked" said the Kangaroo
"I'm sitting here wondering what to do".
"I've lost me jump and got the hump,
So I can't be a Kangaroo
Boo Hoo".
Mick Leigh

Elephants are lovely guys,
They're good and true and tell no lies.
They don't take more than they can eat,
And always watch where they put their feet.
Wayne Hepburn

Imagine catching a ferry to France; you leave England with the familiar call of robins and song-thrushes, and the rustling of rabbits in hedgerows echoing in your ears. On arrival in France you are met with strange birds and small mammals exhibiting foreign colours, patterns, shapes and sizes. None of these creatures are recognisable; none of them look like the ones from home.

In our travels from Australia to Thailand we have seen an enormous number of strange and exotic creatures, but we have also seen a transition in these animals since the beginning of our trip: kangaroos have given way to orangutans, emus have changed to elephants. This variation in flora and fauna was made famous by Alfred Russell Wallace, an Englishman who first travelled through the Malay Archipelago way back in the 1850s. Some of the locations we have visited over the past three months seemed remote and outlandish, imagine what it must have been like for a naturalist 150 years ago, crossing the region before global communication, internet, email or phone. He travelled with an assistant and a Malay guide to interpret for him. Often he stayed with Dutch or English diplomats in luxurious surroundings, and then the next day he would set off into the jungle in his totally unsuitable, formal English clothing, to explore some of the more remote areas of the region.

Alfred Russell Wallace spent 8 years travelling through the Malay Archipelago but it wasn’t until his boat from Singapore to Makassar was diverted (there were no direct flights in those days), that he noticed the change in species across the very narrow 35km strip of water (the width of the English Channel at its narrowest point) between the islands of Bali and Lombok. What Wallace discovered were animals and birds of an apparently Australasian origin on Lombok and to the east of the Malay Archipelago, whereas on Bali and to the west, Asian species were found. This transition is now known as the Wallace Line in honour of this intrepid explorer.

---