We saw a koala!!! In the wild!!! 🐨

Koalas are rare creatures. They're native only to Australia and (apart from in a few zoos around the world) are found nowhere else on earth. 🌏

They're mammals but a strange kind of mammals known as a marsupial; their babies live in a pouch (that's attached to the mother's belly) for the first chunk of baby's life until they're big enough to fend for themselves. 🐨

Koalas are very, very picky eaters. They eat a diet made up exclusively of leaves, but not just any leaves. There's only a handful of (Eucalyptus) trees whose leaves they'll much on. This means koalas are almost always to be found somewhere up the very tall trunks of these specific trees. 🌳

They're hard to spot. Not only because they're so often very high up a tree, they also sleep for about 20 hours every single day. 🤯

We live in a part of Australia where the climate is good for these grey, fluffy, cute, strong, sleepy bear-looking creatures that are not actually a bear at all. Koalas are only found where their preferred food grows and, luckily for Brad and me, those same trees grow in the bush near our house. 🏡

Still, in the 4+ years I've lived here I think I've seen a koala in the bush... twice? 🤔

If so, today makes the third! 🙌

We were doing our afternoon walk, a 4km loop through the aforementioned bush reserve, and over our right shoulder we heard a crash in the undergrowth. We hear this kind of sound almost every day when a wallaby senses a human (us) and decides we are too close and makes an escape. 🦘

But there was something different about this sound. It crashed once and then not again. So either the wallaby was injured and couldn't get away...

*We walked closer to investigate...

Or it was a koala. 😯

Brad whipped his phone out quick smart to get photos. I don't know if either of us had seen a koala this close in the wild before. (I'd seen and held them in zoos and even worked with koalas briefly in one job many years ago - hence why I know so much about them off the top of my head!! 😄)

We got a bunch of photos. We marvelled in awe. We shared the happy news with another couple who walked by that we often see in the bush. And we all walked away grinning. 😁

Except maybe the koala who probably just did the koala version of sighing with relief thinking something like: "Thank God the humans have gone and now I can focus on finding a tasty bunch of leaves and a comfy fork in this big tree where I can curl up and go to sleep." 💤

{All photos taken by Brad, @new.things, and used here with his explicit permission.}