Bonny's baby gets a name (and you can adopt him)!

Bonny Fire & Bonny Blaze
From koalawrangler's gallery.

Yes, that's right, Bonny Fire's precious little bundle now has a name: Bonny Blaze.

And Blaze is now available for adoption by clicking here! What a great Christmas gift -- a certificate bearing Blaze's photo and personalised with your recipient's name, and the satisfaction that your donation has helped the hospital continue to care for other koalas who are not as lucky as little Blaze.

You can see what a handsome bundle he's growing into in this video:

Joey on board
From broken_puzzle's gallery.

Blaze is fully outside the pouch now, as you can see, and even wanders a little way off from Mum as his independence grows. He's also eating leaf, which is of course essential part of growing into a fully-fledged koala!

Click here to see more photos of Bonny Blaze.

Rest in peace, Wiruna Lucky

Wiruna Lucky was a beautiful old koala who shared the "old girls' yard", yard 9, with Bonny Fire, Birthday Girl (until recently) and dear Cloudie.

Wiruna Lucky
From broken_puzzle's gallery.

Like Cloud, she seemed to be a fixture in the place. As an elderly koala needing extra nutrition and hydration, she was fed formula twice a day, which sometimes meant locating her in the vast area of yard 9. You see, Lucky was a bit of a wanderer. She wouldn't gallop around the perimeter of the yard like she wanted to get out, but rather, would make her visits to various spots in the place, such as Perch Miracle's gravestone or the various trees that studded the yard.

This is the last footage I took of Lucky as she traversed yard 9.

Trish chats to Wiruna Lucky
From koalawrangler's gallery.

Lucky was almost entirely blind so perhaps she liked travelling around her yard on foot so as to take stock of her surroundings. Volunteers got used to Lucky bumping into them at the leaf cutting table or jumping the line for formula, in front of Bonny Fire.

Wiruna Lucky
From koalawrangler's gallery.

Unfortunately, due to her age, Lucky's molars were becoming increasingly ground down. On numerous occasions, Lucky would present with a a lopsided bloating to her face - it turned out that this was due to nothing more than a pad of semi-chewed eucalytus leaf deposited in the side of her cheek. Volunteers would have to massage the pad down for her to swallow it.

Koalas need healthy teeth to grind down the large volume of leaf they need to consume each day to survive. In Lucky's case, she was no longer able to do this adequately. It was her time to join Cloud in the great gumtree in the sky.

Dear speckley-nosed one, you will be missed.


Click here to see more photos of Wiruna Lucky.

Joey joy

Just two weeks ago, Bonny Fire was tantalising us all with her delightfully puckered pouch and the promise of joey within! She was down from her favourite tree a lot more than usual, getting her extra fill of freshly delivered leaf now that she's eating for two.


Bonny's full pouch
From koalawrangler's gallery.
Then, unexpectedly, a little arm would shoot out...


Oy! Whose arm is that?
From koalawrangler's gallery.
I just managed to catch the arm retreating back into the pouch on video:


...and we knew that it wouldn't be too long before this little smiley face paid us a visit.

All the beautiful photos below are courtesy of Broken Puzzle's gallery.

Click here to see more photos of Bonny Fire's precious little joey at the Koala Hospital, Port Macquarie.

Click here to find out just how our Bonny got in the family way in the first place!

Hospital for...possums? no. 3

Possy Possum at 52 grams
From koalawrangler's gallery.

Strictly speaking, Possy wasn't really in the hospital's care, but rather in Cheyne's, the hospital supervisor. Cheyne fed Possy around the clock at home and brought him into the koala hospital every day on her motorbike, tucked safely into her leather jacket. Possy spent the day in the humidicrib which is usually reserved for pinkies (unfurred koalas). Possy was snug as a bug in a rug, enveloped in a nest of knitted pouches, all the colours of the rainbow.

Possy Possum
From koalawrangler's gallery.

Cheyne fed Possy with a marsupial supplement every few hours - much the same routine as with a young koala joey. The syringe was almost too big for little Possy who would eagerly gulp at the drops of formula.

Ten weeks' later, and Possy Possum is showing all the signs of developing into a healthy young sugar glider.

He weighed in at the grand amount of 52 grams, and he is developing the telltale webbing through his arms that will allow him to glide from branch to branch.



Possum Cam!

Click here to see more photos of possum patients recovering at the Koala Hospital, Port Macquarie.

Noah's a goer

When last we left little Noah, he was extending his stay in Port Macquarie by a few more weeks. His weight was a bit lower than we'd have liked, and we wanted to be sure young Noah would have everything in his favour before we released him back into the world.

By the beginning of May, Noah was ready for his big trip back to his home range down near Port Stephens, over two and half hours away from the Koala Hospital.

Apparently, Noah enjoyed his road trip home. He munched on nicholii and red iron bark leaf all the way, and never once whined, "are we there yet?"

On arrival, Noah took off up his chosen tree, a Eucalyptus robusta, or good ol' swamp mahogany, as we koalawranglers call it, a koala favourite. Having spent over six months in the same tree (in our joey yard), Noah naturally took a moment or two to orient himself before scooting to the top of the tree and digging in to the fresh leaf.

I'm told that it was dusk by the time his carers from the Native Animal Trust Fund left Noah happily chewing away. Although it's a bit cooler down there than in Port Macquarie, they resisted giving him a blankie...he's got plenty of koala fur to keep him warm :)

Click here to see more photos of One Mile Beach Noah.