"A WORD FROM BILLY-BLUE-GUM"

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 148, 20 December 1930, Page 20

"A WORD FROM BILLY-BLUE-GUM"

♦ GOOD morning! lam Bill}'Blue-Gum, Australian by birth, and my real name is "koala." Colour, grey. Eyes, brown and beady; and what I should most like would be to lie on your chest with my arms round your neck, and let you.stroke and make a fuss of me for an hour or so. You see, there are not very many of us left in Australia, because our fur is valuable, and men have destroyed great numbers of us for the

money which we brought them; but my master is wiser than they. He thought it was a pity to let us die out altogether, because we are quite harmless, and just as tame as kittens; so he has given us a park to ourselves, where we may roam to our heart's content, knowing that we are protected and in perfect safety. '•'.." . Nearly all day long I sleep in the blue-gum trees —that is why I am called "Billy Blue-Gum." I eat nothing hut blue-gum leaves; and sometimes I hear my master say that he wishes I were not so frightfully particular as to the kind of gum-leaf I eat! "There are about 400 varieties of gums in Australia," I heard him complain to a friend one day, "and the little wretches will eat only six of those varieties." But then, he doesn't know what a difference there is between one blue-gum tree and another. Some of the leaves are sour, and some are too hard; we like the soft juicy kinds, and since gum-leaves are our only food, we just refuse to eat any but the best! At night lam more awake than by day. My friends and I jump from branch to branch, eat, and climb to the tipmost top of the trees. Have a look at my photo—you will see that I fit very comfortably into the little seat where a branch forks. It is a happy life we live nowadays. You ■would hardly believe it, would you, but during the years 1926-27 some 3,500,000 of our tribe were killed for our fur. Owing to the cold climate you have in New Zealand, we have been told that we would only die if we were sent there. I am sorry about this, as I should have loved to.have met you, but perhaps some day you will hear from me again. with a big hug, t "BILLY BLUE-GUM." Australia.