Meeting Lucy

animalsaustraliaClimate crisisconservationjournalism

Dec 22

It was late morning, on a sunny Sunday in the Byron Shire Hinterland. I had just moved into a new apartment, nestled in a neighborhood cul-de-sac in an area called Bangalow.

Bangalow had seemed like a slightly odd place to settle at the time, a tiny town surrounded by hills and forest and 20 minutes from the city. Its “downtown” is approximately two blocks long, lined with old architecture and a police station that looks more akin to your granny’s country cottage than a place of law enforcement. Bangalow looks like it time travelled from the 1950’s and stepped out slightly disoriented in 2020.

But that’s a part of its charm. The people here are friendly and say hello to each other, they look you in the eyes and smile even if they don’t know you, old and young live next to each other, and people look out for their neighbors, we know our postman and his kids’ names. It’s that kind of place.

I had been searching for an apartment for months and it had been slim pickings. Covid had thrown Byron into a housing crisis as thousands of people from Melbourne and Sydney fled their cities in search of some semblance of peace and normalcy in the Byron Shire. There was little available on the rental market and I was quickly approaching a hard move out date.

So, when I found this granny flat in Bangalow, filled with light, surrounded by trees and singing birds, I jumped on it. I was so grateful when the real estate agent told me the apartment was mine.

I hardly knew anyone in the area and I felt pretty removed from the rest of the world, but there was something special about this place. While I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time, something told me this was where I was meant to be.

The months leading up to this move had been hard ones for me. I was new to the area and still new to Australia, I was starting a new career and also facing the perpetual uncertainty of a global pandemic with few friends and no family around. On top of that, I had just gotten out of a relationship that seemed at the time to be my only anchor in the Byron Shire. To say the least, I felt pretty alone.

I had been living in my new apartment in Bangalow for about a week. I woke up on this particular Sunday morning, feeling low and looking down; I felt lost, untethered, uncertain about my future in Australia. Sundays have always been the hardest day of the week for me, perhaps harking back to memories of dreading school on Mondays…mixed with Sundays feeling like they’ve been especially designed for families and lovers.

For as far back as I can remember, I have always felt a deep calling to do work that makes our planet a friendlier and more just place. And in the last year, in what felt like one giant leap closer to my path and purpose, I had began building this project, The Heart Atlas. The vision for my work had finally begun to crystallize, writing, photographing and directing stories that aimed to make a positive impact for people and the planet.

…But was I on the right path? Was I doing enough? Was I paying enough attention? Was anything even happening at all?

It seemed like these seeds of doubt just loved to pipe up on Sundays. Popping up like “hey! I know today is supposed to be a day of rest, but you’ve got some time on your hands and I thought, maybe you should use it to worry instead”. As you can see, Sundays are typically, not the best day of the week for me.

But, as it turned out… this was to be a special and different kind of Sunday.

As I sat eating my breakfast on the back patio, all of a sudden I recalled the night before. As I had drifted to sleep I heard the strangest sound echo through the forest of trees surrounding my flat. It was a cacophony of grunts and bellows from many different directions. It sounded almost like frogs..but really really BIG frogs.

However, I knew from my research that this strange sound was not coming from frogs...it was the signature sound of...Australian koalas! These are the noises koalas make at night to alert other koalas of their coordinates, to claim their territory, and at times to also court a mate.

As I sat eating my breakfast, the memory of last night’s peculiar music lit up my heart and I mused to myself—

…there must be koalas around!

A smile leapt across my face and with an excitement and joy I hadn’t felt in some time, I lifted my head slowly, thinking...perhaps if I search hard in the trees, one day, I’ll find a koala here.

Without moving an inch from my seat, I lifted my head and gaze– and I could not believe what I saw – in plain sight, right in front of me, in the only tree I had a clear view of from my little patio – a BEAUTIFUL koala was sitting in the lowest hanging branch of the tree.

And almost immediately, she looked back at me.

My eyes grew wide and I gasped—I was overwhelmed by the sight of my first koala neighbor. I had spent the last year building this project, The Heart Atlas, and focusing in great part on the plight of the koala.

And here I had landed, in what I thought was a random town in the middle of basically nowhere, that turned out to be a lively wildlife corridor and a well-known koala habitat. I had somehow ended up in a home surrounded by the very animals which I had committed myself to studying and protecting.

I ran inside to grab my camera and telephoto lens. As I photographed her I realized she had a tag in her ear, which meant the local koala rehabilitation organization, Friends of the Koala knew her. I was able to determine her tag number and when I contacted Friends of the Koala I uncovered her story.

Her name was Lucy and two years prior she had been found sick in a tree a couple doors down from where I now lived. She had been rescued and taken into care by local koala advocate superstar Linda Sparrow, founder of Bangalow Koalas- an organization working to protect and rebuild koala habitat. Little Lucy had been treated for Chlamydia up in Currumbin and then at Friends of the Koala before being returned to the same tree she had been rescued from.

Over the next couple of months Lucy seemed to appear in my tree every 3-4 days. She’d be there one day, munch through the night on its tasty eucalyptus leaves and in the morning she’d be gone, making her rotation through her favorite trees in our neighborhood.

Any time Lucy came to visit I photographed her. She always appeared in the same tree, right in front of me. She was instantly recognizable by her big flat nose, her squinted sassy eyes, her white striped underarms, and her obscenely flexible legs which could wrap all the way around her back to scratch her ears.

Sometimes at night when I knew she was just waking up for her midnight snacks, I’d go outside, sit in the dark and watch her, eventually wishing her goodnight before I headed to bed.

My love for koalas grew as each day passed and having Lucy quite literally – in my face – kept me inspired to continue learning about their purpose, their plight and all the challenges they continue to face in Australia.

I really wanted to understand the ecological role that koalas were playing in the forest.

I thought, perhaps if I can uncover an essential role that they play in keeping the forest in balance, that I’d be able to harness that information and use it as a part of the fight to protect them.

At first I wondered if their consumption of eucalyptus leaves assisted with fire control – since eucalyptus trees are highly flammable and a massive risk when wildfires emerge. Given that koalas can eat up to a kilogram of eucalyptus leaves a day, I wondered—could healthy koala populations keep the forest from over-burning?

But after speaking to some of the experts at Friends of the Koala I learned that the koala’s fire control capacity was minimal.

Even though they eat a lot of eucalyptus relative to their size, there simply aren’t enough of them to significantly reduce the amount of eucalyptus leaves in the Australian bush.

So, out the window went my first theory.

I kept looking. But as it turns out, koalas don’t pollinate anything, they really have no predators and they don’t build anything. They’re also very solitary creatures, only spending time together to mate or to raise their young.

Lucy’s days seemed to be mostly spent, sleeping, grooming herself, eating leaves, and occasionally changing trees. Of course, these days, she also spent some of her time looking at me curiously and wondering what kind of strange creature was always taking her portrait.

The only stretch of a specific “service” I could find in my digging was noted was in an article by Janine Duffy, in her article, “What Purpose Do Koalas Serve”:

In the “You Yangs, west of Melbourne, a little bird lives in substantial numbers. They have a distinctive, friendly rattling call... They are called Brown-headed Honeyeaters.
They are very successful, and considered common in their range... Their nest, like many honeyeaters in the Melithreptus group, is a small deep cup that hangs by its rim in the foliage of the lower branches of trees. The nest is made of bark strips, grass, cobwebs and hair (5). Koala hair.”
(echidnawalkabout.com.au/koalas-and-brown-headed-honeyeaters/)

As it turns out, these bold little honeyeaters will seek out koalas and pluck their nice warm fur for their nests. Some koalas will swat at them while others will embrace it as a free grooming session.

How many honeyeaters do this, and how many koalas allow it, is unknown. I don’t think Lucy would have tolerated t

These honeyeater nests seemed to be the only ecological contribution koalas were providing the forest.

But it felt like a bit of a reach, turning this information into the bedrock of a Save the Koalas campaign.

2021 Campaign to Save The Koalas reads: “The obscure brown headed honey eaters west of Melbourne need fresh fluffy koala fur to get optimal insulation for their nests!”

Of course – it’s very possible (and highly likely) that we simply haven’t yet uncovered the full role that koalas play in the forest.

But until then, we would be left with the question. Why save the koala?

This inquiry left me wondering...dreaming...

What if, their purpose was less practical, set less within the confines of the human paradigm that everything must have a utilitarian purpose in order to be worthy of life. To be worthy of protection. To be worthy of adoration.

What if the purpose of koalas’ existence was less about service...and more about spirit?

Those friendly faces, and fluffy ears, so reminiscent of our childhood teddy bears. And they live in the forest, a mystical place that feels full of potential and life. And when a koala looks at you, even in a picture, and its eyes meet yours, it feels like some magical other worldly creature is reaching out and making contact with you.

How are these creatures even REAL?

Koalas are a reminder of our own wildness, of our interconnectedness, of the link between humanity and nature. And their warm, sweet faces seem to do something to awaken the human heart. Their innocence and vulnerability, cracks something open inside of us.

I realized, the koalas are beloved and important, perhaps not because they are essential to the forest, but because they are essential to the heart.

They remind us of the incredible vulnerability of our wildlife, and in fact, they seem to give a face to the forests of Australia.

Perhaps they also remind us that the most vulnerable are sometimes also earth’s strongest. Despite, years of being hunted, a myriad of diseases that plague them, despite losing so much of their habitat due to deforestation, enduring climate change, unprecedented bush fires, and massive industrial development – they are still here. Seemingly smiling down at us from the branches of their towering eucalyptus trees.

I know this is a highly controversial topic, but personally, I believe the koalas may just be the team captains for Australia’s wildlife. This isn’t a competition but we have be honest, the eastern false pipistrelle, a strangely shaped bat just doesn’t have the effect on us as a cuddly koala face.

Please, before my bat friends get riled up, hear me out. The love we have for koalas does not invalidate the value or importance of protecting other species. The world’s collective adoration for koalas can and should be seen as a viable path to protecting all creatures that share their forest habitats. Koalas have had an effect on humanity. They’ve done something to us, to our hearts. And this is currency, currency to help save the forest. Because, if we save the forests for koalas, we save the forests for all the other animals too. So, you see, the koalas are actually fighting for the protection of the brush-tail possums, the flying foxes, the wombats and wallabies, the swamp rats and even the tree frogs.

That seems like a pretty important role to me.

But the heartbreaking truth is that even though koalas are one of the most heavily funded animals in the world, they may still be on the path towards extinction. Environmental studies have revealed that if drastic action is not taken to protect koala habitats and address climate change, they could go extinct by 2050 in New South Wales. As many say, “if we can’t save the koalas, we can’t save anything”.

But on behalf of Lucy and her brethern, I am committed to doing what I can.

I don’t think Lucy’s appearance in my life was an accident. She helped me lift my chin when I needed it the most and helped me remember why I’m here.

Thank-you Lucy for reminding me to look up and for bringing magic into my life.

I love you and I will keep fighting for you.

x Olivia of The Heart Atlas