Strong criticism of the South African model eschewing federalism came to the surface at a lively meeting of the liberal imperialist
Boobooks Club in Melbourne in November 1910, when the businessman Jack Joshua presented a paper in favour of Australian unification (
Boobooks Minutes, 89, 18 Nov.
`It had no ear tufts, which you'd expect if it was related to the flores scops owl, and we realised it might be a different species: maybe a new species of "hawk-owl" like the southern boobooks we studied in Canberra.'
It was a hawk-owl, like the southern boobook, but its DNA differed from southern boobooks by 8.2% and from the brown hawk-owl of east and South-East Asia by 9.1%.
From torchlight glimpses, ornithologists speculated it was a Sumba boobook owl or the flores scops owl.
(49.) Sense About Sex, p 39; Boobooks, Minutes, 90th Meeting, 17 February 1911, University of Melbourne Archives (UMA).
For Boobooks', 21 July 1916, O'Dowd Papers, VSL, Box 1/1.