OPOSSUM’S FROLIC

Southland Times, Issue 20112, 24 February 1927, Page 2

OPOSSUM’S FROLIC

TOWN WITHOUT LIGHT. THE RESCUE OF A COCKATOO. Sydney, February 3. It has been left to a little opossum to throw out of gear a large portion of what is claimed to be the longest line of electric service in the Empire and to put in utter blackness one of the largest towns in New South Wales. When the Victorian Electricity Commission decided to run an electric service from Morwell, in Victoria, to the New South Wales border, at Albury, a distance of 300 miles, it apparently reckoned without opossums. What Albury has had to say about the service since it was connected with it has been somewhat expressive. It has had ceaseless trouble with the system. A night or two ago the whole of the service over a big belt of country, was again out of order. Albury, which is a city in its proportions and importance, once more sought its candlesticks and philosophically waited. Albury’s wrath this time was mingled with good-natured laughter when it was eventually found that during a midnight frolic on one of the electric standards an opossum had managed very successfully to contact the wires and throw the whole system into a state of chaos. Albury was just beginning to settle down again to its electricity service when, with dramatic suddenness, it again found itself in inky blackness. The inquisitiveness of another opossum, or possibly the same one as was responsible for the other trouble, led to a further break of several hours in the service. Albury is strongly of the belief that the old gas lamps were not so bad after ail, even if they did not cast the effulgence, ordinarily, of electric lights. At Traralgon, Victoria, the electricity supply of the town was cut off last Saturday night to permit of the rescue of a tame cockatoo. The bird, normally restricted to the length of his chain suddenly found himself free, although the chain dangled from his leg, and flew to the electric light wires in front of the local stores. It was thought the chain would be the means of his end if it came in contact with the wires, so an official was aroused and the town’s current was cut off while the bird was removed from his precarious perch.