Too cute not to share - T.rugosa.aspera (Bendigo Area, Aus)

[Scotts1au]

This is only from my personal observations having travelled around and rescued a lot of stumpies off the road and seen a lot of road kill. I think really there is a smattering of individuals that would be considered typical in other areas even here. Ranging from almost black to grey speckled but more often than not through the greater Bendigo goldfields region more likely to be brownish. I have seen them further East of the Campaspe River <100km away from here almost black and very dark towards Wodonga on the Hume Highway but similar to what you might find anywhere from there to central queensland to South Australia. Generally also North West of here towards the Mildura direction they tend to be very dark - a little like Lea's ones. South West of here say South of Horsham in Western Victoria there are a lot of dark ones that tend to be relatively small in size but more with greyish appearance and mostly whitish speckling on the sides and face and sometimes more or less whitish arms. Some appear more speckled than grey if that makes sense.

I'd have to say these are gratuitous generalisations and only a relatively small sample size of the populations that I've seen. At one time in my life I used to drive from Bendigo and Melbourne to Adelaide regularly and would sometimes see them every few hundred metres in places.

[Richard.C]

that description from south of horsham describes my old line to a tee,small dark with white arms and speckling,sometimes striping of white down there back,some stay very dark,black,some have dark brown banding mixed in to

i might look into that more scott,as i havnt the foggiest where they are from,but im pretty sure the original 5 i got were wildcaughts sold to a pet shop in melb so could explain alot

as soon as they were put on the licensing system in victoria i havnt seen any like that in petshops,mostly brown and yellow fleck types that seem to be big nsw type or smaller sa type