Take a couple of feisty young women born a century apart, add a dedicated naturalist, mix in a mysterious antipodean creature hailed as a hoax by the learned men of English science, and you have an historical romance set in Australia and England.

Tea Cooper is noted for her works in this genre and this book does not disappoint.

A central role is played by the mallangong, an Aboriginal word for the platypus, studied in detail by Charles Winton, a naturalist living and working in the early 1800s in what is now the Wollombi area of New South Wales.

His daughter, Rose, takes a keen interest and becomes an expert sketcher. Winton has long kept the eminent naturalist Sir Joseph Banks informed about his findings, and he is invited to present these at a meeting of the Royal Society in London. When he is badly injured by the venomous spur on a platypus’s rear leg, his daughter makes the journey in his stead, only to receive a cold reception from the scientific Establishment.

Alternating chapters of the book tell the story of Tamsin, a young librarian in Sydney in 1908, tasked with securing a sketchbook an elderly Wollombi woman wants to donate to the library.

In their endeavours, each of these attractive and strong-willed women are helped by a man for whom their regard ranges from attraction to distrust.

A teaser: the Aboriginal story of the mallangong claims it is the result of a union between a duck and a water rat, so the physical attribute shared by Rose and Tamsin is a fascinating one.

Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville