Location: Nattai National Park, NSW

Hanging out with: George

Connection: George and Serena met at the University of Sydney when they were doing their Masters in Wildlife Health and Population Management course. George then volunteered for Graeme during his PhD fieldwork and since then George and Graeme have worked together on many fieldwork jobs across Australia.

We spent a day with George on his current job of catching koalas in Nattai National Park . The koala population in this area has been dubbed “the forgotten population” as people didn’t even realise they were there. A bushfire went through a few years ago and many koalas were found dead after trying to escape the fire by crossing the road and then sadly were hit by cars.

Since then, the council has been pro-active in trying to get some information regarding the koala population in the area. This is where George comes in. He has tree-climbing licence (yes you need a licence to climb trees) and special equipment to ‘encourage’ the koala to climb down the tree so that it can be caught. These koalas are getting full health checks by a vet and then radio-collared so that their movements can be tracked.

However, on our day out, even with 12 people searching for koala (three of whom started at 4am in the morning), we didn’t find a single koala that day. That’s the life of a wildlife ecologist. A few days later George sent us some photos of his successful catch which included a mum and joey.

Although Graeme and I didn’t see a koala, it was a beautiful day to be walking in the bush. I also got a little distracted with bird watching. I saw a beautiful wedge-tailed eagle that was only 5 meters away on a tree branch at eye-level. Couldn’t get the camera out in time but the image will stay in my memory for a long time.