Last week I was walking along the sandy trail that leads from the low beach country up the escarpment to the ridgeline. I rounded a bend and heard a rustle and because I always have snakes in the back of my mind I jumped a metre backwards. The cause of the rustle was a koala, as startled as me, and we looked at each warily. I said ‘hello’ and she turned and climbed the nearest tree trunk to about a metre and a half off the ground.  We looked at each other for a while and I tried to reassure her while she realized hat this was not a suitable tree for a koala. She climbed back don and slowly walked away into the forest.

Koalas are important here for more than ecological reasons. The political implications of a koala are that the land gets an extra level of protection and potential funding. So, I record all of these sightings and pass them on. For me its more than that – it’s a rare encounter. I treasure these as a window into a world away from the trappings of modernity. An encounter with another being who I know lives in a subjective world but one that I cannot easily access.