Living teddy bears

Press, 20 April 1982, Page 18

Living teddy bears

One of Australia’s bfest loved animals is the phascolarctos cinereus — the koala bear. ? This little bear looks like a teddy bear with its soft grey fur and leathery nose. It has yellowish or white fur on its stomach. Australia is the only coun-

try where the koala is a native and lives in the wild. Areas have been set aside in different parts of the continent as sanctuaries where the koalas can live safely in their natural environmental. Several of the animals have been sent to zoos all around the world and they

are one of Australia’s most popular tourist attractions. The bears eat eucalyptus leaves from gum trees. They have five toes on each foot with strong claws that let them climb trees. One claw acts as a thumb and they can hang on to branches to stop themselves from falling.

Koalas are marsupials, like Australia’s other famous native, the kangaroo. They carry their young in a pouch where the baby koala is also fed until it is old enough to eat gum leaves. The baby koalas usually stay in the pouch until they

are several months old when they are able to ride on their mothers’ backs as they climb about the trees.

Koalas grow to about two feet long (0.6 metre) and are related to the oppossum.

Sometimes a rare white or albino koala is born. There is one at the Lone Pine Sanctuary in Queensland. It was found by a motorist sitting in the middle of a Queensland road. When it arrived at the sanctuary the staff treated the white koala for a sunburnt nose.

Tin foil is usually something that gets thrown out after the chicken is roasted but it also has another use — for model making. A piece of cooking tinfoil can be rolled into a ball and pressed into different shapes. Roll it into a long stick and make a snake. Tear off another rectangular strip, fold it down the middle and press the ends firmly together to fashion a boat.

Now that you have got used to the feel of the material, try your hand at modelling. Foil can be as versatile as clay for making people, boats, animals and plants — the basic shapes of a man and horse are just for starters. One basic rule is the fewer odd bits of foil, the more stable the model. Apart from imagination, you may need scissors to trim pieces and pins to fix bits of foil together, such as a hat on a human figure.