Crafting with natural materials
Use a large gumnut for the body and a sheoak pod for the head. Glue on a piece of red felt to create the hat, and a piece of cotton wool for his beard. Add some little craft eyes. Glue it altogether using a low melt glue gun! Easy peasy!
These gorgeous Australian native marsupials have large pink ears and a long, thin tail. Once common and widespread, their numbers are now low due to habitat loss and predators, and sadly bilbies are now only found in a few desert and grassland areas and in captivity.
Fantastic work is being done to protect bilbies, and more information can be found on the Save the Bilby Fund site, and the Rabbit Free Australia site.
Unlike our native bilbies, bunnies are a destructive pest which have eaten native plants and damaged ecosystems across the country since they were introduced in the 1800’s. Further information on why we should be celebrating bilbies, not bunnies at Easter time can be found in this Australian Geographic article.
Haigh’s Chocolates and Fyna Foods Pink Lady Chocolates make delicious and cute chocolate bilbies, and they donate part proceeds of sales to supporting the living ones!
To create your own nature craft bilby, use a large gumnut for the body, a sheoak pod for the head, and attach hakea pods for ears. A coral gum cap makes a perfect pointy nose, and piece of string can be used for a tail. No hakea pods? No problem! You could use small leaves, pistachio shells or anything else that’s about the right size and shape. Glue everything together with a trusty low-melt glue gun.
