Ecologists buy 1,000-acre blue gum plantation and transform it into wetland it once was SunSunday 7 updated SunSunday 7 The abrupt form of Victoria's Mount Abrupt looms behind the new swamps. ( Share Print text only It was 2016, Mark Bachmann was stumped. He and his team of scientists were three years into transforming a huge tract of agricultural land into the wetland it once was, but had no idea how their small, regional, not-for-profit could negotiate the final step: to buy 1,000 acres of commercial blue gum plantation. That was when he spotted the platypus. "I drove out after a big flood to see how our two trial swamps were looking, I'd just taken a few steps off the road and saw a black thing moving up along the bank of a deep drain," Mr Bachmann said.