The 99th Koala

Rescue and resilience on Kangaroo Island

Kailas Wild

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Australia
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781760858100
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

After bushfires devastated Kangaroo Island's koala population, Kailas Wild went to help. This is the inspiring and sometimes confronting story of what happened next. An arborist by trade and conservationist at heart, when Kai heard that some of the injured koalas could only be reached by a tree climber, he drove 1500 kilometres to volunteer. Seven weeks later, he had participated in the rescue of over 100 koalas, become an international social media sensation and formed a special bond with a baby koala – Joey Kai. In words and pictures, The 99th Koala shares Kai's experience and introduces us to some of the koalas of Kangaroo Island. Sometimes tragic, sometimes hopeful, above all Kai's story commemorates our unique wildlife, and demonstrates the power of one person trying to make a difference. 'At a time when many people have felt helpless to act against the immensity of the fires or the threat of climate change, Kai's daily descriptions and videos of saving helpless animals have been a welcome dose of personal courage and deep humanity.' ABC 'In words and photos that are impossible to look away from, Kai introduces some of the koalas on Kangaroo Island, painting a powerful picture of Australia's unique wildlife... a gripping reminder of a summer that feels like it's in our country's distant memory.' Mamamia 'Harrowing, touching and uplifting.' The Courier Mail ' The 99th Koala is a plea for wildlife, it's a tribute to the volunteers who strive to save animals and rehabilitate them. It's an emotional rollercoaster that shows the devastation and damage... but it's a tale of love and dedication.' Good Reading

Fire

My first encounter with the destructive nature of fire was at the age of ten: I arrived home from school to find fire engines on our 12-acre bushland property. A small fuel reduction burn had smouldered underground for days before bursting into life and threatening the house when everyone was out except my 80-year-old nan. I’ll never forget my nan telling me not to worry my mum, who was at work at the time, and later my mum being as shocked that she hadn’t been told as she was by the fire itself.

A couple of years later, a candle I’d left alight in my bedroom led to the room burning to the ground. Luckily, it was separate from the main house – but I can still remember the sound of glass exploding and how scared and helpless I felt as I watched on, completely incapable of doing anything to stop it. The experience drew a line under my childhood.

The Black Summer’s megafires also moved me onto a different stage of my adult life.

My direct contact with the fires began on 13 September 2019. An ecologist friend of mine, Mark, was helping fight the Bees Nest fire that threatened the rainforest adjoining the World Heritage Mount Hyland Nature Reserve, on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales. I went up to help. For a week, alongside the property owner Rosie and other community volunteers, we used dry, manual techniques to hold containment lines, clear around rough-barked trees to stop fire travelling up their trunks into their canopies, put out fires that were edging their way through rainforest and took shifts throughout the night to ensure the fire hadn’t managed to jump. I’m an arborist by trade, so I helped reduce the major fuel loads in the fire path and clear burnt trunks that had fallen across access roads and evacuation routes. We managed to save some small patches of forest, and Rosie’s house survived, but 50,000 acres were lost in that fire alone.

Cool temperate rainforest is typically cold and damp as the name suggests, and seeing it burn barely out of winter was a major, terrifying warning signal for what was to come as summer approached.

My second encounter with the fires was closer to home, north-west of the Blue Mountains at Running Stream. On 18 December, my then-partner Ella’s family were preparing for the Palmers Oaky fire which was approaching their property. With winds expected to pick up in their direction, I drove up from Sydney to help them defend their home.

By the time I arrived, the NSW Rural Fire Service had managed to do a strategic backburn in the valley a few kilometres away, which limited the immediate threat. That gave us some more time to reduce the fuel loads and make sure the place was as prepared as possible if the situation worsened. Towards the end of the day the outlook improved and I decided to return to Sydney in case the fires burning further down the valley, near Lithgow, cut the road.

As I drove home, it felt surreal to see the fire getting closer and closer to the highway. Later that night the road was indeed cut.

Two days later, the conditions deteriorated significantly. Ella’s family had been forced to evacuate and the fire burnt up to the front door. The house was saved only because the RFS arrived in the middle of the night.

Going back to work for myself as an arborist in Sydney, wearing a mask to protect against the smoke became a standard part of my Personal Protective Equipment. I felt lucky not to have asthma or to be in danger like so many people to the north, south and west of me. But I also felt worried about the affected communities and guilty for not doing more. I’d been a volunteer for the SES – State Emergency Service – for four years, so I put my name down to assist with their Bushfire Information Line, a phone service that provides updates on unfolding emergencies, and volunteered for out-of-area deployments as a chainsaw operator to support the RFS in the fire grounds. I also freed up as much time as I could to help locally in the suburb of Marrickville with requests for assistance – mainly storm damage – while other members of the unit were away supporting the RFS as radio or flood boat operators and capacity was lower than usual.

For me, the feeling of being powerless to help was the worst part of the bushfires and volunteering in whatever way I could seemed to be the only remedy.

On 3 January 2020, and then again on the 9th, two major fires devastated two thirds of Kangaroo Island, off the coast of South Australia, wiping out native forest, farmland, countless wildlife and killing two people.

The day the second fire tore across the island, I was volunteering as part of an SES strike team in southern NSW, assisting in communities that had been all but completely destroyed by fire – places like Lake Conjola where to survive, people had taken to boats or even driven their cars into the water. Where people had died, trapped in their houses. By the time I arrived, the immediate threat of fire had been replaced with health and safety hazards like exposed asbestos, unstable trees, smoke and mental health issues.

The most important thing our team could provide was the reassurance that help was at hand. People’s lives had been turned upside down – with nowhere to live, in a state of shock, vulnerable to new hazards and health risks – but the thing that threatened to destroy their spirits was the feeling they’d been left alone to deal with the wreckage. This was the first time in months that I felt I could really do something; strange as it sounds, it was the first time I felt alright.

After returning home, my plan was pretty much more of the same – get back to work and give the SES as much time as I could. I’d seen the footage of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) helping with koalas on Kangaroo Island, and when wildlife organisations put the call out for volunteers, my interest was piqued, but the volunteer response was so overwhelming that I thought nothing more of it – surely they had the help they needed, and I was best off at home.

Koalas

The first time I ever worked with wild koalas was in 2010, as a 25-year-old living in Brisbane, Queensland.

I was studying native animal rehabilitation at technical college, and every Sunday for six months I made the three-hour round-tri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Introduction
• 1. Fire
• 2. Koalas
• 3. Going to Kangaroo Island
• 4. The First Koala
• 5. Handling Koalas
• 6. How Are We Going To Do This?
• 7. The Hospital
• 8. Coping
• 9. Not Coping
• 10. The Physical Toll
• 11. Finding Joey Kai
• 12. Breaking Point
• 13. Getting Help
• 14. Freya
• 15. Oliver
• 16. Burnout
• 17. Fresh Start
• 18. Turning a Corner
• 19. The 99th Koala
• 20. The Virus
• 21. The Last One
• 22. Leaving
• Acknowledgements
• Copyright