2020 February: Yarragon South Koala Sited

2020 February 7: Koala Sited Yarragon South
I read your article in the Trafalgar News so am sending this photo of a koala that visited us on February 7th this year. It was in a blue gum we planted (Eucalyptus globulus – not our local E. bicostata) in our garden. We have lived here for 37 years and would always see a few koalas each year but I had noticed that they had been few and far between over recent years. I was very pleased to spot this one in our garden. I gather it was a male by the noise it was making – rather like a chainsaw starting up. I had actually heard it several times in the weeks previous but had not been able to locate it, then wondered if I was imagining things.
I had also seen another koala down the back of our property several months earlier, and to my surprise it was walking along the road when I was on my morning walk. We have remnant bush down the back of our place on the Yarragon South Road which is Mountain Ash and fern gullies. In the past the place we would see the koalas was in these huge Mountain Ash trees. The koala tried to climb the steep roadside bank when it saw me, but the soil was crumbly so it couldn’t manage to, so I walked quietly past it then it continued walking up the road.