They are all the site of platypus sightings in the past 10 years or so.

As the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) gets ready to run its Platy-project in September - in which citizen-scientists will be asked to report any platypus sightings - it has released a map showing where the famously shy monotremes have been seen in this region in the past.

"We know the platypus has a wide distribution across the east coast - from northern Queensland to southern Tasmania - but there isn't a lot of data about which specific waterways platypuses live in, or where populations might be in decline or even if there have been local extinctions," a spokesman for the ACF said.

"Filling these knowledge gaps is a big job, so researchers are asking for the community's help.

"We've put together a map that shows the species' range and where platypuses have been sighted in the past."

The spokesman said a lot of the documented sightings of platypus in creeks and rivers around Bathurst are pre-2000, so the ACF is hoping to have some up-to-date sightings logged.

"We are asking people to use the map to identify priority areas near them - then head out to see if they can spot a platypus and log their sightings with the Platy-project," the spokesman said.

Bathurst's Professor David Goldney - who studied platypuses for years on Duckmaloi Weir, a tributary of the Fish River - wrote in the Western Advocate in early 2020 about how the extreme drought was affecting platypus populations.

"Knowledgeable locals are reporting dead and dying (starving) platypuses in many of the east-flowing rivers, including those that have ceased to flow," he wrote.

The heavens subsequently opened, though, and there have been a number of flood warnings on the Macquarie River in the years since.