Koalas and Kangaroos

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21640, 4 November 1933, Page 4 (Supplement)

Koalas and Kangaroos

8

At Koala Park, Pennant Hills, just a few miles outside Sydney, you will find a unique and happy family of little native bears and kangaroos living in ideal conditions the gum trees and other native shrubs. The kangaroos roam the 40 odd acres of the park and find shelter in the scrub, but the little native bears never put a foot to. the ground, for they live in the gum trees and, when not eating succulent young gum leaves, they are curled up in a forked branch, looking for all the world liko lovely big muffs. While everyone is interested in seeing the kangaroos, especially when they hop round with a cheeky young " Joey " (as the baby kangaroos are called) poking a wondering head from its mother's pouch, it is the koalas, which are exactly like the toy teddy bear we all know so well, that prove the chief source of interest and deilght. These gentle little creatures have not a vico in the world, and they are so sweet and lovable that everyone longs to owq one. That, however, is not possible, as a by-law has been passed forbidding people to keep native bears in captivity. Mr. Burnet, the director of the park, and the man who founded it, looks after his large family of 50 bears with all the care and tenderness of a fatner. He has quite a big staff of boys and men, who help him to care for the animals and show around the visitors.

All the bears have a name, many of them native ones, and often very pretty. Take Lallawoon, for example, which is aboriginal for "sweet" —a lovelysounding name and well represented in its owner, who is the prettiest bundle of soft grey "fluff imaginable. Mannagum is another. He is a very loving little chan. with a slightly crooked nose that makes him readily recognisable.

You can see him being nursed by a devoted mother in the accompanying photograph. For the first six months of a koala's life you rarely see it, for it lies within its mother's pouch for that period, only occasionally putting out its little head to inspect the world. At tho end of that time it has become rather largo for the pouch, and it is then transferred to its mother's back

and it rides there for another two or three months. The mother bear often nurses her offspring like a human mother, holding the babv bear in her lap. When a bear cries or is distressed it sheds tears, and it has actually been

seen wiping away tears with its paws. Borraby, another of the bears, was rescued from a travelling circus. She was discovered sitting on a nail in the centre pole of the tent, this being the nearest approach she could find to a tree fork. Toonool in its early life was reared in a Sydney flat. One day, when sitting on the window-sill, it overbalanced and fell a distance of four

storeys on to a concrete path below. All it did was to break an arm. The municipal authorities ordered it to Koala Park, and in due time the arm set of its own accord, and Toonool now climbs as well as the other bears.

One morning there was consternation in the park. One of the little baby bears had vanished. The mother was in great distress and Mr. Burnet and his staff searched high and low for tho little creature. At last they found it — in the arms of a lonely mother bear who had no bahies of her own. She had stolen it from its real mother, and was nursing it with all the devotion of its owner.

Tho koalas are very healthy littlo creatures, but occasionally thcv "fall sick —sometimes with pneumonia and eye trouble. The cause of the latter is puzzling the minds of half-a-dozen Macquarie Street (Sydney's equivalent to London's famous Harloy Street) specialists, and, although a considerable amount of research work has been done, the trouble has not yet been diagnosed. The bears afflicted with eye trouble eventually become blind. There arc only two or three blind bears at Koala Park, where they are housed in a hospital and have every care and attention, and some day Mr. Burnet hopes that science will discover the cause of the trouble. ,

The bears live entirely on gum leaves and they really have two parks in which to live—Koala Park, where thej* lite in the summer, and Bluegum Park, where they spend the winter. The change gives the trees on which the bears have lived and eaten most of the foliage a chance to grow again and be ready for tho next seasoni Both local and overseas visitors make a point of visiting Koala Park, and tho fame of the bear has spread abroad to such an extent that the first thing the overseas visitor asks when the lands in Sydney is: " Where can I seo tho native bears-'"