In an op-shop in Orange I purchased this for a mere $4:

500 pieces is more than I usually like to do on these stays at mums, but the art was so nice I couldn’t resist. Let’s make it!

I intended to start with the edge but the radius was large and the curvature of the end pieces too subtle to separate them.

Very quickly I realized the pieces didn’t have much ‘grip’ and even a slight nudge of the puzzle tended to dislodge them. In other words, this wasn’t the highest quality product!

The above took a couple of hours, and was enough for my first session.

There’s a weirdness to the art, as if the artist wasn’t entirely sure what some of these beasts look like. Also I wonder why they included two numbats?

The bottom half was considerably harder than the top, especially the lower right quadrant. In total it took me three sessions and about six hours to complete:

Or more correctly almost complete; there were three missing pieces:

Shame on that op-shop for selling an incomplete product! They should have reduced the price by $0.02 to account for the 0.6% missing pieces 🙂