Bottersnikes and Gumbles

Bottersnikes and Gumbles are fictitious creatures in a series of children's books by Australian writer S. A. Wakefield and illustrated by Desmond Digby. They live in the Australian bush.

Bottersnikes have green wrinkly skin, cheese-grater noses and long, pointed ears that go red when they are angry, which is most of the time. They are perhaps the laziest creatures in the world. They eat mattress stuffing (preferably barbecued) and pictures of food out of magazines, and for sweets they like rusty nails and bottle tops. The Bottersnikes’ biggest fear is water, because they shrink when they get wet and have to be hung out to dry.

Gumbles, on the other hand, are the most friendly and cheerful creatures in the bush and can be squashed into any shape without being hurt, although when flattened out completely they cannot regain their own shapes without help. They are hopeless when they get the giggles.

Wakefield wrote four books about the Bottersnikes and Gumbles:

• Bottersnikes and Gumbles (1967)
• Gumbles on Guard (1975)
• Gumbles in Summer (1979)
• Gumbles in Trouble (1989)

In 1996 the four books were reissued in an omnibus volume under the title The Complete Tales of Bottersnikes and Gumbles.