Eluding us is the numbat, a rare Australian marsupial which could be the love-child of a chipmunk and an anteater. As we slowly roll along bush tracks, researchers explain how this annual trip helps plot the species' survival. This team's efforts have seen them scratched off the international red list of threatened species - a rare glimmer of hope in a country facing an extinction emergency. On an island just off the coast is one of the last surviving pockets of the world's rarest marsupial, the Gilbert's potoroo. Diving in the sapphire waters around it is the increasingly scarce Australian sea lion.