Platypus Bend
**CBCA Notable 2026, Eve Pownall Award**
The rivulet begins high on a mountain top. It twists and turns and turns and twists until it swirls around a bend and softens into a calm pool...
No-one knows – but in that pool there is a secret.
From the award-winning author and illustrator behind Saving Seal and Chooks in Dinner Suits comes a meditative story about the elusive platypus, and the need to respect and nurture the environment it calls home.
Previously a primary school teacher, Diane Jackson Hill is an award-winning children’s author. She lives along the southern coast of Australia and is strongly drawn to the beauty of its plants and animals.
Diane is passionate about connecting children to the beauty of our incredible world and encouraging their awareness of its fragility.
Platypus Bend is the fourth title in Diane and Craig’s environmental book partnership—three of them in collaboration with Museums Victoria.
Previous titles include Chooks in Dinner Suits, Windcatcher and Saving Seal: the plastic predicament. All three have received CBCA Notable awards, with Chooks in Dinner Suits also winning the Wilderness Society’s Environment Award for Children’s Literature in Picture Fiction in 2017, Saving Seal shortlisted for the same award in 2022, and Windcatcher winning a Whitley Award in 2020.
Craig Smith was raised in country South Australia, later training at the South Australian School of Art in Adelaide. In a forty year career he has illustrated many beloved and award-winning books for children.
Craig spends a great deal of time out in nature, whether he’s tending his garden or venturing further afield to camp, bushwalk or ride his bike.
One compelling theme in front of Australians now is the need to pay attention to the environment. To learn more about it. To try and understand. To take responsibility for a patch of it. To be in it, enjoy it, and share it.
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