Eggs

From the 1930s to the 1960s Moora man Montrose, or Monty, Purser would travel the countryside around Moora for his job as a birdsman and vermin inspector and controller. He relished the chance to soak up the solitude of the Moora bush on his travels and found himself particularly enamoured by birds. Purser took to studying the birds and would often scale trees to delight in the wondrous designs of birds’ eggs. Long before it was outlawed, he carefully collected samples of some of the eggs, and preserved them for display. Among them are the eggs of swans, kestrels, parrots, swallows, robins and wrens. Later, Purser gifted his egg collection to his grandson Greg Tobin, who went on to return them to the region from which they’d come, by donating them to the Moora and Districts Historical Society.