n early 1943, the second world war raged across multiple theatres. Hitler’s army had just suffered a historic defeat at Stalingrad, but U-boats still prowled the Atlantic and Britain’s resources were stretched to the limit. So it must have come as a surprise to Australian prime minister, John Curtin, when a telegram arrived from Winston Churchill requesting six platypuses be sent to Britain forthwith, in a scheme conservationist Gerald Durrell described as “magnificently idiotic

Historians have tried to place this episode in a broader context of empire and international geopolitics, but it seems Churchill just really wanted a platypus. He had collected exotic animals throughout his life, including black swans, a white kangaroo, a budgie named Toby who attended ministerial meetings, and a lion named Rota, which he sensibly kept at London Zoo.

There was one man for the job. In March 1943, government officials knocked on the door of Australian biologist David Fleay, who received “the shock of a lifetime”. Fleay convinced the powers that be that getting six platypuses to England, and looking after them once they got there, was unrealistic at any time, let alone in the middle of a war. Instead, they agreed to transport one live monotreme – a healthy boy Fleay caught and named Winston. When Australia’s foreign minister, Herbert ‘Doc’ Evatt, met Churchill and US president, Franklin Roosevelt, that May in Washington, he cabled the Commonwealth director-general of Health: “Churchill at Washington most anxious that platypus should leave immediately. What is present situation?

Four months later, Winston boarded the heavily armed MV Port Phillip, where he was housed below deck in a wooden platypusary built by Fleay, who stocked the ship with “enough earthworms, crayfish, mealworms and fresh water to have refuelled Winston on a complete round the world voyage”. The ship slipped out of Melbourne in September, crossed the Pacific and passed through the Panama Canal with Winston “lively and ready for his food”. A press release was drafted announcing Winston’s arrival in the UK and asking for worms to be sent from across Britain, packed in jars with “mould or moist tea leaves”, to feed the prime minister’s new pet

Sadly, Winston didn’t make it. Four days from Liverpool, the ship’s sonar detected a German submarine, and the captain responded by detonating depth charges. The boat and its crew survived, but there was one new Australian war casualty: little Winston. “Tragically, the heavy concussion killed the platypus then and there,” Fleay wrote. “After all, a small animal equipped with a nerve-packed, super-sensitive bill, able to detect even the delicate movements of a mosquito wriggler on stream bottoms in the dark of night, cannot hope to cope with man-made enormities such as violent explosions