Blood, sweat and tears: a day with a taxidermist

For the uninitiated, there's something a bit creepy and gruesome about it, but it's fascinating too. Reporter and photographer STEPHANIE CHEN spent a day with Paul Holmes, a taxidermist at South Pacific Taxidermy, as he prepared a koala for a museum exhibit. It's a job with more than its fair share of blood and gore, and that's something people are often repelled by, but there is craft and passion aplenty. Taxidermists must abide by strict wildlife laws, and the technicalities of the work can be tricky, but there there is a great deal of skill in creating a life-like result. 

Paul Holmes is working on a koala skin for mounting. The koala has been commissioned and the skin provided by a museum.

Holmes makes it clear that to be a taxidermist, you should be an animal lover. He says koalas and foxes are his favourite because of their thick fur but a co-worker retorts from across the room that by next week he will have a different favourite animal depending on what he is working on.

“Australian native wildlife is protected by law,” Holmes says. “A random person can’t just go pick up native wildlife road kill and bring it here to get it done and a taxidermist needs a licence to do it also.”

“We’re pretty lucky to have gotten to work with some pretty exotic animals over the years,” he says, pointing to the wide array of stuffed animals scattered across the warehouse.

For Holmes, there’s a strong artistic element to taxidermy. He spends hours perfecting the mount of the animal, sculpting the body to a desired position as requested by the customer and ensuring that the animal is well-proportioned.

“We like to represent the animal as it naturally should be,” Holmes says, in relation to a current trend for taxidermists to bedazzle and decorate a stuffed animal with human accessories. He prefers to appreciate the animal’s natural anatomy and how the animals existed in their natural habitat.

After shaping and smoothing out the mannequin, Holmes assesses his progress by popping the skin roughly over the top.

“Usually when people think taxidermy, they think stuffing the animal with some kind of cotton or something but it has come a long way since then,” Holmes says. “We mount the skin on a mannequin now, which gives a much more accurate representation.”

Holmes manipulates and manoeuvres the body of the koala until he is happy with how it looks.

Holmes ends the day assisting in cleaning up the work-spaces and hopes to get the koala finished in the next few days.