There is a first time for everything. And this was the first time I had been mistaken for the world's largest burrowing animal. I have been described - although not often - as "cuddly". But never been likened to a hairy-nosed rodent. Not to my face, anyway.
No matter how non-herbivorous I tried to look, Mrs Kaye Munro, who with her husband Bob runs the Waterholes Guesthouse on Archie Road in east Gippsland, thought I looked remarkably like a wombat. I simply couldn't hide my short, squat legs, underdeveloped neck or my small eyes. I even tried to sit in a way that didn't suggest that my tail had been reduced to a largely functionless structure.
Over wine and dinner, observing that I was predominantly a night-time creature, prone to making odd noises when eating and exhibited a very slow metabolism over a huge plate of delicious steak and yams, my hostess revised her definition and I became a muddle-headed wombat.
To prove the likeness she showed me some drawings in Ruth Park's classic children's book. The Australian outback is not good for a man's self-esteem. I tried not to rise to the provocation, knowing that a charging wombat can easily knock down a fully-grown bed and breakfast proprietrix. I also resisted the urge to give Mrs Munro a warning ankle bite.
As twilight fell, the wonderfully-engaging Kaye took me outside to try to see or hear one of my lookalikes. We made out way down to the river through stands of manna gums, wild asparagus and elephant garlic. Somewhere a kookaburra screamed. The woods rustled. There were distant sounds of chewing and digestion.
"The deer eat everything but the agapanthus. I've given up on jacaranda. Wombats like their asparagus raw," said Kaye knowledgeably, implying they would turn their cute little signature stubby noses up at juicy green stalks swamped in Hollandaise. She stopped abruptly.
"Oh look! Wombat poo!" my guide gasped excitedly.
People who specialise in knowing the names of birds and flowers are some of the most enthusiastic creatures on earth. Over the years, I have succumbed to their charms while succeeding in remaining shocklingly deficient in the flora and fauna department.
But I haven't developed a complex about it. The subject of faeces proudly remains very much a closed book. I am happy in my ignorance. So, I deferred to my hostess. You must tread carefully when following in the footsteps of a habitual naturalist.
The hold nature has on some people cannot be underestimated. Kaye lives for nature and the great outdoors. It is on her doorstep. A stay at Waterholes offers "an unsurpassed escape to peace" and "an Eden experience in a wilderness river valley".
First impressions were of a woman who undoubtedly knew her nodding blue lily from her waxlip orchid and her bugle-twining glycine from her wonga vine.
Having lived at Waterholes for 30 years, Kaye was very up on her birdsong. As she led me down her garden path she announced there were over 100 bird species and as we made out way through the undergrowth, I sensed a strong likelihood of being forced against my will into a frog census. But Kaye settled for pointing out epicormic growth and naming fungus.
But the sight of droppings whose source she could not identify turned her scatty. She gasped and shook her head. She almost panicked. "Now I wonder what left that?" she said bending over the mystery calling card. I tried to show a respectful interest. Mrs Munro put some of the puzzling pellets in a pocket to look up later.
"Recognise that?" she asked a few yards later, still looking up rather than down. The question was rhetorical since my guide had correctly assumed that there is no signed photograph Sir David Attenborough in a heart-shaped frame on my bedside table.
"It's a open cut-mine she said. "Gold was found in Nicholson River in 1854."
Gippsland is a special place. It is the great outdoors offering, in a relatively small area, every conceivable landscape and habitat, making it the perfect place for the flora and fauna fetishist.
You have the Tara Bulga and Croajingalong national parks as well as temperate rainforests like Glen Nayook. Some of the best views are from the cow sheds - rolling fields to high Alpine country, to bush. That is Gippsland. Waterholes is on an official loop of Victoria's Great Alpine Road and the Sydney-Melbourne coastal drive.
That night, on Kaye's advice, I tried to make the most of my time in the Gippsland outback by using my ears to identify the honking of the Samba deer and the other noises of the night. Soon I became familiar with the rumbling moans and groans of koalas and the yip-yip of the sugar glider possum. I am sure I heard the heavy breathing of a wombat sensing a threat to his territory. Or maybe it was the cistern.
In the morning I proudly boasted about my achievements and asked Kaye what she had heard. She frowned and admitted to hearing something she had never heard before. Strange piercing screams and pathetic yelps.
I didn't have the heart to enlighten her. That it was me snipping my nasal hairs, in a vain attempt to look a little less like a wombat. The prominent incisors I shall leave to a dentist. The legs, neck and eyes are a lost cause.