{"id":1988,"date":"2017-04-10T14:03:07","date_gmt":"2017-04-10T03:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/?p=1988"},"modified":"2017-04-10T15:21:16","modified_gmt":"2017-04-10T04:51:16","slug":"easter-bilby-enjoyed-generations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/2017\/04\/easter-bilby-enjoyed-generations\/","title":{"rendered":"The Easter Bilby: Enjoyed since 1993"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hopefully the Easter Bilby will be bringing you plenty of Haigh’s chocolates this weekend. Here is the story of the Haigh’s bilby, which has indeed been\u00a0<\/em>Enjoyed for Generations<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 if only they were still life-size!<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Wrapping moulded chocolate\u00a0and eggs ready for Easter.\u00a0Circa 1965.<\/p>\n

The idea came from Erwin Shulten, a ranger at Bundaleer Forest Reserve at\u00a0Jamestown, who asked Haigh\u2019s and a couple of other manufacturers to create a chocolate bilby\u00a0to replace the traditional Easter rabbit in support of the goals of the Foundation for Rabbit-\u00a0Free Australia (RFA<\/span>). Not only would an Easter bilby draw attention to the endangered status\u00a0of this shy, long-eared Australian native marsupial but it would also promote a more realistic\u00a0image of rabbits as destroyers of the environment rather than cute and cuddly pets.\u00a0Alister had no hesitation in supporting the project, and Haigh\u2019s supplied chocolate\u00a0bilbies for the Bundaleer Forest Easter Egg Hunt for several years.<\/p>\n

The first bilbies in 1993, almost life-size, were an instant success;\u00a0stores ran out of stocks, and people even followed Haigh\u2019s delivery\u00a0van in their desperate bilby quest. Two years later Haigh\u2019s produced\u00a0a series of smaller bilbies, using a simpler, stylised design that\u00a0made the chocolates easier to unmould. With demand for the\u00a0miniature bilbies even greater, the chocolate bunny was\u00a0abandoned in 1995 and Haigh\u2019s made the chocolate\u00a0bilby a permanent feature of its Easter range. Since\u00a01993 Haigh\u2019s has donated part of the proceeds of\u00a0bilby sales to promote awareness of the threat to\u00a0the environment posed by rabbits and to help\u00a0fund research into the development of biological\u00a0controls, and continues to support\u00a0RFA<\/span>. Twenty years after the beginning\u00a0of the partnership, in 2013, Haigh\u2019s had\u00a0produced more than half a million Easter Bilbies.<\/p>\n

\n

Some years ago, two weeks before\u00a0Easter, I was putting the sale of\u00a0seven bilbies through for a lady. She\u00a0told me it was her second purchase\u00a0of seven bilbies in the same week.\u00a0They were for her grandchildren but\u00a0she had eaten the first lot. Jokingly I\u00a0said I hoped she would not be back\u00a0for another seven. Lo and behold,\u00a0a few days before Easter she was\u00a0back again. \u2018The final seven,\u2019 she\u00a0told me, both of us laughing.\u00a0Beverley Tripodi, Haigh\u2019s employee<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"

Designed by Katharine Lahn, the\u00a0bilby wears a Haigh\u2019s apron and carries a basket of brightly\u00a0coloured eggs.<\/p><\/div>\n

Find out more about<\/em> Enjoyed for Generations here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hopefully the Easter Bilby will be bringing you plenty of Haigh’s chocolates this weekend. Here is the story of the Haigh’s bilby, which has indeed been\u00a0Enjoyed for Generations\u00a0\u2013 if only they were still life-size! Wrapping moulded chocolate\u00a0and eggs ready for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553,107],"tags":[668,667,188,669],"class_list":["post-1988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adelaide","category-extract","tag-bilby","tag-chocolate","tag-easter","tag-haighs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4v1Of-w4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1988"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2075,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1988\/revisions\/2075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}