I am south of Walcha, in the high country of the Tablelands and My Mum and I are headed across the paddock in search of koalas as we have always done. We know which direction to take as Mum heard his grunting call echoing across the valley last night. My Mum has been watching this boy for a while now, she calls him The Manager.

Most of the trees in this stand are New England Peppermints. Their bark is dark and rough, there are only a few of them that are pushing the ice blue flush of new leaves. Standing out amongst the dark peppermints are the smooth white trunks of the snow gums. The branches and twigs are weighed down with white balls of blossom, which are humming and buzzing with insect life and they smell like honey.

My Mum and I stop under a peppermint at the edge of this stand of trees, the next group of trees is a small forest of scribbly gums that my brother and I planted as kids, I think the koala may be easier to find if he is amongst the smooth white trunked gums. I love these trees, as do the kangaroos who gather in a large mob in their shade. I look around as we chat, there are hollows everywhere in these trees, this place is a possum paradise. I remind myself that we are looking for koalas and I turn my head to the sky, The Manager is sitting in the canopy almost directly above us. He is a beautiful male koala with pale coloured fur; he doesn’t seem to have any white flecked patterning to his bottom which is a creamy colour that blends up his body into a pale grey. He is blowing around in the wind and peers at us from the spaces between the leaves as they open and close in the wind. Despite being a light colour he is remarkably well camouflaged in the dark barked tree and very difficult to photograph.

We wander off through the peppermints and snow gums all the time keeping an eye on the tree tops, hoping we may see another koala.

Submitted by FOK member Kathryn Kermode