Excerpt from my autobiography:
Saturday was the SBS (TV) Koala Search day, held at Dooralong. Jake Cassar had managed to raise interest with the SBS (The Feed) program to do a documentary about our community’s quest to protect our koala population and their precious habitat from the Central Coast coalmine.
Being in the currently green countryside, amongst the trees in honour of our precious koalas was a sacred, uplifting experience. I felt the connection with nature increase the longer we breathed the fresh air and listened as people spoke about koalas on the Central Coast. Ann from the Pearl Beach Arboretum spoke about exciting plans to transition koalas to Pearl Beach; a caretaker at Walkabout Park spoke about wildlife; and Jake captivated children with the ways of the bush and wildlife, enthralling us all in the art of bush craft as he shared secrets of nature that contains medicines, food, materials, hygiene products, survival tools and more. Talks also addressed the inconceivable plan of having a massive coal mine devastate the entire environment. Taking with it koala habitat, countless wildlife, the quality of our air, our drinking water, quality of life, as well as depriving the children and future generations of this beautiful Central Coast as we knew it. At the end of the talks, I shared my Koalas Not Coal poem, introducing it with the possibility of koalas saving us as we save the koalas Jake told us a koala the fact that fact koalas and humans share the same type of fingerprints. Right there is evidence that We Are One.
‘If we save their homes, we will save ours.’ I continued, ‘Even if we could somehow survive an industrialised Central Coast, koalas can’t. They are every reason to stand up and not lose hope that good will prevail.’
I said all this, and presented the following poem to about 200 people, as best I could, because the batteries ran out of the PC 10 minutes before I went on:
Koalas Not Coal
Koalas are our Australian stars
For certain, they truly really are
Where would we be without their existence?
Which would happen by removing the habitat they’re living in
With spoon-shaped noses and fluffy ears
They often called Koala Bears
But they are not bears, not bears at all
Able to survive in gum trees so tall
All their needs are in these trees
Rich nutrients absorbed from eucalyptus leaves
After eating a pound or two each day
No wonder koalas sleep their days away
Before the devastating fires, they were a vulnerable species
Now their tragic decline in numbers is very serious …
Koalas are our Central Coast stars
Koalas Not Coal is all we ask
