Mountain Tails by Sharyn Munro Page B

her offspring, who was far too old for that, almost as big as herself. But this was a rescue operation for, as she passed close by the window, I could see that the young one had a large area of raw flesh on its hind leg. Only a dog could have done that.
    Too exhausted to make it to the shed, she took her sad burden to her halfway house and disappeared into its dark depths. I put a container of water at the entrance to it, and hoped for the best. It was an even greater tragedy, because one had drowned in the horse trough weeks earlier. I’d cried at that, thinking she must only have one left—which now was badly hurt.
    Next day, I glimpsed a patch of brown and white just beyond the stack; it must be the injured one resting in the sun, I thought, and tiptoed round the back to see better.
    A spotted furry carpet of young ones, sleeping, curled together like kittens! I counted six. The mother must have brought them down from the shed to keep the sick one company. I was delighted that she felt so secure with me; they were only about 5 metres from the house, right next to my woodheap.
    I then read that the average litter size is five, but they play in pairs. She’d had seven, so my shed must be a good breeding place.
    And the quoll pairs were very playful, taking turns to keep me awake at night with their thumpings and crashings, chasing each other over my tin roof and along the windowsills. At such times I would grit my teeth and remind myself that all kids must grow up and leave home sometime.
    But having seen the result of a foray beyond the netting, I wished she could keep them in the playpen forever. Or that I could net the whole property. Quolls can climb, dogs can’t.

LOST KOALAS

    Since the 2002 fires, which reduced my green 65 hectares to stark monotones of black and white, I have seen no koalas on my ridge. Nor, more significantly, have I heard one at night, as I often used to.
    There is no mistaking the call of a male koala, and it is such a deep, loud bellow that once you hear it you’ll never again think of this animal as cute and cuddly. It is a cross between the roaring of a lion, the grunting of a pig and the growling of a bear. Not that the koala is a bear; it’s the sole representative of its unique family.
    Koalas are solitary animals, coming together only to mate, and over the years I had only seen a koala here on perhaps five or six occasions, although hearing one every year.
    The first time we saw one was in early 1979. It was daytime, and five-year-old Sam spotted an unusual animal bounding up the track. ‘Look! A sheep!’ he said, pointing at the fat and woolly grey creature ahead. When it began to climb a small tree, and he could see its broad fluffy ears and its long black pad of a nose, he knew what it was, but its behind had indeed looked more like that of a tail-less sheep than of our national icon. Our first koala climbed effortlessly to a fork of the trunk, wedged itself, turned and peered down at us with surprised currant eyes. Perhaps we were its first humans.
    They can climb and cling so well not only because of their sizeable curved claws, but because their hands and feet are designed to encircle branches. Just as our thumb is ‘opposed’ to our fingers and can touch them, their first two fingers are opposed to the other three, and the first toe is opposed to the other four. Koalas are our only tree-climbing mammal without a tail to help them, so I probably should feel more kinship with them!
    Once when I was repairing an old fence, a visitor accompanying me was asking whether I saw koalas much. ‘No,’ I’d replied as I re-banged in a spike, ‘although this is the sort of tree they’d like. But you can’t look up when you’re bushwalking in this country or you’d break a leg.’ To demonstrate, I looked up to the top of the tree in front of me—and there was a hefty koala, looking down with great indignation, no doubt