Melicleptria albivenata (Montague), Hermite Island, Montebello Group (1913), Western Australian Museum

Within the zoological collections of the Western Australian Museum is a delicate moth with creamy-brown wings. Stored in its own individual box and kept separately from other moths, its small body appears overwhelmed by the labels that surround it. These multiple labels and special storage arrangements are testament to the moth’s status as the first example known to western science. This makes it a holotype, a valuable original specimen that identifies a new species. Even if a better specimen is subsequently found, the holotype can never be superceded.

The name officially given to this moth references the man who collected it: Paul Denys Montague, a young British zoologist who was working in the Montebello Islands in 1913. As a child, Montague and his fellow pupils at Bedales School in Hampshire had been taught about Australia as part of the curriculum. Undertaking a special project, students were required to assemble a portfolio of work, including essays on Australia’s environment, climate and history, and to produce illustrations of its flora and fauna. Some of this work has survived in the School’s archives. One essay begins authoritatively: ‘The history of Australia is one of exploration and peaceful settlement. There is little or no history to record before the coming of the white man' (i). In another task, pupils were required to imagine themselves as a recently arrived migrant to Australia, writing home to a fictitious relative. ‘Dear Elizabeth’, one imagined letter begins, ‘Out here in Australia it is very different to England, it seems so dusty and hot... The animals are very queer, they seem so small and funny’ (ii).

A little over a decade later, Montague was camped on Hermite Island in the Montebellos, working furiously from sunrise to sunset to collect whatever specimens of wildlife he could get his hands on. After dark, he worked on, setting and preserving the day’s haul of creatures before they could rot or be eaten by rats. Initially concerned by what he perceived as the ‘general scarcity’ of wildlife found on the islands, he seems to have been untroubled by the contradiction inherent in his concern about ‘scarcity’ and his frantic collecting. Like many anthropologists of the time, Montague imbued his zoology with a sense of urgency and significance, framing it within a discourse of impending extinction. In an essay published in 1914 in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, he wrote of the Montebellos: ‘It is of great importance that the fauna of these small islands be studied and recorded as soon as possible... in a very few years’ time little or nothing will remain’ (iii).

In fact, even Montague’s dramatic forebodings could not live up to the turmoil and tragedy that awaited as the twentieth century progressed. Montague himself was killed in 1917, when the plane he was piloting was shot from the skies above Salonika in World War One. Placed in an unmarked grave by German and Bulgarian soldiers, his body has never been located (iv). In 1952, thirty-eight years after Montague’s zoological expedition had concluded, the Montebello Islands were selected as the site of detonation for Britain’s first atomic bomb.

Despite its physical fragility, the holotype moth that bears Montague’s name has survived for over a century in storage. Today, it offers researchers valuable insight into the Montebello Islands’ wildlife prior to that cataclysmic event.