http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/14/2541986.htmThe industrial town of Burnie in north-west Tasmania has been hit time and time again by job cuts but one industry is going from strength to strength.
Last week another 280 jobs were slashed from the town's main employer, Caterpillar, and over the years, thousands of jobs have been lost from the Pulp and Paper Mill in Burnie.
It used to employ 4,000 people but now just 300 locals work there and the paper mill is so run down it could soon be closed.
But another company in town is making handmade paper out of a material no one else wants - wombat scats.
"Back in 2005 we did a kangaroo poo paper and the whole idea and concept of that was in Africa for many years they have been using elephant dung to make into paper," Creative Paper boss Darren Simpson said.
"So we knew, as paper makers, we knew that as long as the animal was eating a plant fibre, we could use it, but the whole wombat idea come from the tourists themselves.
"As people were coming through and we were showing them the samples of our paper, they would throw questions at you like, 'Can you make it from sheep poo?' or 'Can you make it from koalas?' and the one that kept popping up more than any other was the wombat.
"So we thought, 'Well, the customer obviously wants it,' so we thought, 'Let's give it a go,' and it happened to turn out to be a very nice paper."
The natural-looking paper is a hit.
"I can't imagine that it is from poo; it looks good," one tourist said.
"I thought it would be brown but it's white. It won't be long before we will all be farming wombats by the look of this paper here," another said.
Mr Simpson says there are some downsides to producing wombat poo paper.
"When we are boiling it, it does smell horrific as you can imagine but once it has been sterilised and rinsed properly, there is no scent left to it," he said.
"If anything it just gives you a nice, organic smell.
"It is very, very clean. It is very fibrous so basically once you break it up, basically what you are look at is as if the animal has just eaten grass and it has just gone through its system."
All the paper is being made out of scats from one wombat who lives in a wildlife park near Cradle Mountain.
Every day Nugget the wombat produces half a bucket of nuggets and his keeper, Steph Curtis, collects the waste and sends it to the paper-makers.
"Wombats actually mark their territory by their poo so a wombat will back their bottoms up onto the highest rock they can find on the edge of their territory, do their faeces up there to display to everyone else, every other wombat that comes past, 'This is my property, don't come across this area'," she said.
"So they need to have their poo square so that it doesn't roll off the rocks. Most of it is unlike us whose muscle contractions inside their rectum that causes it to be square."
Up in Burnie, they can tell what Nugget has been eating.
Sometimes the paper turns out bright green, sometimes it is brown, but it always makes the tourists smile.
Subject: Wombat poo paper industry booming 
April 14th 2009, 8:40 am
I don't think I would want to use wombat toilet paper!
