Two in the Bush (16 page)

‘What are they?’ I whispered to Bob.

‘Great glider possums.’ he whispered back. ‘They’re the largest of the glider possums – they’re fairly common up here. Wait, and I’ll try and make them
fly.’

He picked up a stick and approached the trunk of the tree. The possums watched him with interest. Reaching the base of the tree, Bob hit the trunk a couple of mighty whacks with his branch, and
immediately the possums’ air of benevolent interest changed to one of panic. They ran to and fro along their branch, chittering to each other like a couple of spinsters who have found a man
under the bed. The fact that they were some seventy feet above Bob and quite safe did not appear to occur to them. Bob belaboured the trunk of the tree and the possums grew more and more panicky;
then one of them – uttering a cat-like mew – launched himself off the branch into the air. As he left the branch he stretched out his arms and legs to their fullest extent and, as the
flaps of skin along the side of his body became taut to act as ‘wings’, he assumed a sort of shoe-box shape, with a head one end and his long tail streaming out at the other. Silently
banking and weaving with uncanny, glider-like skill, he skimmed over the clearing and came to rest on a tree trunk some eighty feet away, with all the ease of an expertly made paper dart. The other
one soon followed him, drifting and banking through the air, and eventually landed on the same tree, only a bit lower down. Once they were reunited they both humped themselves up the trunk and
disappeared into the thick foliage at the top of the tree. I had been very impressed by the flight of these lovely creatures, particularly by the distance they had covered, but Bob told me that
this was a comparatively short glide: they had been known to cover a hundred and twenty yards in one glide and in six successive glides to cover five hundred and ninety yards.

Although the creatures we had seen so far were fascinating, we still had not caught up with our main quarry, so we pressed on into the forest. We had been moving so slowly and meandering through
the undergrowth with our lights that we felt we had been walking for miles, whereas in reality we were only about a quarter of a mile from our starting point. We had one false alarm when we saw a
lesser glider up in a tree; in size and shape it looked, in the torchlight, just like a leadbeater’s possum, but it proved its identity for us by launching itself into the air and floating
away through the branches like a flake of wood ash. It was getting on for one o’clock now and the cold was so intense that I felt as if both my feet and hands had been amputated at the wrist
and ankle. I was thinking longing thoughts of log fires and hot whisky, when Bob came to a standstill and shone his torch beam into some low eucalyptus scrub ahead of us, then took three quick
steps to the right, and from this new vantage point raked the foliage with his beam. Suddenly his light centred on one particular spot and there, sitting on a branch some twelve feet away, fat,
furry and completely unconcerned, was a leadbeater’s possum.

Although I had already seen the live ones in the Wildlife Department’s laboratory at Melbourne, it did not detract in any way from the thrill of seeing that rare little marsupial squatting
among the eucalyptus leaves in its native forest. I kept my torch beam steadily on him and drank in every detail. He was sitting sideways on to us, blinking his large dark eyes as if in mild
expostulation at the brightness of our torches; after a moment he attempted to sit up on the branch and give his whiskers a combing, but the branch was too narrow to allow such a manoeuvre and he
fell off, only saving himself in the nick of time with his front paws. He clung there, struggling to get his hind limbs back on to the branch, looking like a portly and very amateur trapeze artist
who has only just made the trapeze. Eventually he managed to haul himself back, and after a short pause to regain his breath he ambled slowly down the branch in a preoccupied sort of way; then,
without warning and with a speed and agility extraordinary for one of his rotundity, he leapt to another branch some six feet away, landing as softly as thistledown. Here, to our delight, he was
joined by what appeared to be his mate, She came running out of the leaves and they greeted each other in a series of tiny, breathless squeaks. Then the new arrival squatted on the branch and
proceeded to comb the fur of her mate, while he sat there looking exceedingly smug. They seemed completely unconcerned by both the lights and our whispered conversation, but at that moment I moved
rather incautiously and trod on a stick that broke with a report like a small cannon going off. The two possums froze in the middle of a passionate embrace and then, like lightning, they turned and
in three graceful jumps they had disappeared into the gloom of the forest. I cursed my stupidity, but comforted myself with the thought that we had been incredibly lucky to see these rare little
creatures at all, let alone spend ten minutes looking in on their private lives. We made our way back to the clearing where we had left the cars, and went into the little hut. Here we soon kindled
a roaring and aromatic fire of eucalyptus wood, and sat round it, thawing ourselves out with the aid of hot whisky and water, heavily laced with sugar. Then, when our bodies once more belonged to
us and we were glowing with heat, we climbed into the Land-Rovers and started on the long drive back to Melbourne. It had been an evening I would not have missed for the world.

A Treeful of Bears

The temperature in the cab of the Land-Rover was soaring somewhere in the nineties, and we were hot, dusty and tired, having driven up from Melbourne, through New South Wales
and over the border into Queensland. The contrast between these blue and cloudless skies and the fierce sun compared with the freezing drizzle we had been subjected to in Melbourne was most marked.
However, none of us dared complain, for only twenty-four hours previously we had been cursing the cold and praying for sunshine. Now we had it in abundance, and the sweat trickled lavishly down our
faces. Presently the road curved gently down into a valley filled with rustling pink-trunked eucalyptus trees, and by the side of the road was a neat notice-board on which was printed.

I knew then that we were getting close to our objective, David Fleay’s Fauna Reserve at Barren Pines.

David Fleay is probably one of Australia’s best-known naturalists. For years he has kept and written about the fascinating fauna of Australia, and among other things, was the first man to
breed the duck-billed platypus in captivity. For years I had known of David Fleay’s work and he was one of the people I most wanted to meet in Australia; for many years he had been in charge
of the Healsville Sanctuary in Victoria, but recently he had left there and moved up to Queensland to start his own Reserve on the Gold Coast, that strip of sunlit beaches that is the Australian
Riviera. Half an hour’s drive and three Koala Crossing signs later we came to a pleasant house tucked away on a hillside overlooking a valley filled with eucalyptus trees and shrubs and
plants ablaze with multicoloured, sub-tropical flowers. We rang a convenient bell and waited dutifully, and presently David Fleay appeared.

If anybody could be said to look ‘typically’ Australian, then it is definitely David Fleay. He is the personification of what everyone thinks an Australian
ought
to look like,
but so seldom does. Over six feet in height, he was well built but not over muscular – whipcord rather than weightlifter. His face was weatherbeaten and wind-wrinkled, and his blue eyes were
gentle, tolerant and shrewd, with a perpetual twinkle lurking in their depths. To complete the picture of the typical Aussie, he was wearing a Stetson-type hat and looked as though he had just
wandered in from some mysterious foray into the outback. He greeted us with warm enthusiasm and with a certain diffidence which was charming; so many people, when they reach David’s eminence,
are apt to have a far better opinion of themselves than their achievements warrant, but David was so modest and self-effacing that it was a pleasure to talk to him. He never boasted about his own
achievements but gave all the credit to his animals, for they, as far as he was concerned, were the most important things in life. Apart from breeding the platypus, itself no mean achievement,
David has kept and bred more of the smaller and rare Australian marsupials than anyone else in the world, and so his knowledge is vast.

A lot of David’s animals – the kangaroos, wallabies, emus and so on – were kept in spacious paddocks and visitors could enter these through self-closing doors. Thus the public
were, so to speak, caged with the animals, which was an excellent idea for it allowed them to get on much more intimate terms with the creatures they had come to see. Collecting a large bucketful
of bread crusts, David took me down to the largest of the paddocks, which housed a mixed collection of kangaroos, wallabies, ibis and a young cassowary named Claude. He stood about three feet high
and was clad in hair-like plumage which looked as though he never preened it – he looked, to be perfectly candid, like a badly made feather duster. He had thick, ostrich-like legs, a Donald
Duck beak and a wild and determined eye: in spite of the fact that he was considerably smaller than the kangaroos and wallabies whose paddock he shared, there was no doubt at all as to who was the
boss. David and I sat on a fallen tree trunk and started to distribute our largesse, and in a moment we were surrounded by a milling mob of kangaroos and wallabies, all nuzzling eagerly but gently
at our hands to get the bread crusts. Claude had been standing at the far end of the paddock, meditating – to judge by his expression – on the sins of the world, and he suddenly woke up
to the fact that there was a free meal going which he was in danger of missing. He came out of his trance with a jerk and ran towards us with a loping stride, his big feet thumping the ground;
arriving at the outskirts of the mob of marsupials around us, he proceeded to fight his way to the front row by the simple process of kicking every kangaroo and wallaby backside in sight. They were
obviously used to this form of attack and were quite adroit at hopping out of the way at the crucial moment, and at one point, when Claude decided to use both feet to kick a large grey kangaroo out
of the way, the kangaroo (in a very cowardly fashion) hopped to one side and Claude fell flat on his back. He got to his feet, his eyes blazing, and waded into the crowd of marsupials with such
vigour that they all scattered before him like sheep before a sheep dog. Any one of the bigger kangaroos could have killed Claude with one well-directed kick, but they were too well-mannered to
attempt this. Having driven off all the competition Claude came back to us and proceeded to engulf bread crusts with a speed that had to be seen to be believed. Presently the kangaroos and
wallabies started to drift back again, and Claude had to keep interrupting his gluttony in order to chase them away. When Claude was fully grown he would measure some five feet in height, and I
could not help thinking that if he persisted in his beligerent attitude to other creatures it would be safer – when he reached manhood – to give him a paddock on his own.

In the next enclosure was David’s group of emus – large, slow-moving and wearing the most vacuous and self-satisfied expressions. Among them was a white one with pale gentian blue
eyes, who was busy sitting on a nest of four eggs. The marital life of an emu is one that would delight the most militant of suffragettes: having enjoyed all the pleasures of the nuptial couch (as
it were) the female then lays her eggs and forgets about the whole sordid business. It is the male who constructs the nest (if it can be dignified with that term), collects the eggs, sits on them
devotedly – without food – until they hatch out, and then takes charge of the youngsters and looks after them until they are old enough to fend for themselves. Meanwhile the females are
simply disporting themselves in the eucalyptus groves, the ultimate in emancipation.

I wanted to see the eggs that the white emu was incubating so assiduously, and David told me to go into the paddock and push him off the nest, as he was perfectly tame and would not take
exception to this. Until I tried it I had never realised how difficult it is to remove a reluctant emu from its nest. To begin with it seems to weigh about a ton, and secondly there does not appear
to be any part of its anatomy on which you can get a firm grip. He just sat there phlegmatically while I struggled with his ungainly body and achieved nothing more than the dislodging of several
handfuls of feathers. At last, by getting my knee under his breast and using it as a lever, I raised him to his feet and managed to push him back from the nest, then I hastily crouched over the
nest, as though I was brooding the eggs, to prevent him from returning. The emu stood just behind me, staring down at me thoughtfully. In spite of the fact that David had assured me he was tame, I
still kept a close eye on him, for a well-placed kick from an emu could easily kill one, and I can’t imagine a more infra dig way for a naturalist to die than to be kicked to death by a
bird.

The eggs looked as though they were made of terracotta and were some six inches long, in a very beautiful shade of dark olive green, with a sort of raised pattern all over the shell, like a bas
relief. While I had been concentrating on the eggs I had, momentarily, forgotten the rightful owner of the nest, so it came as something of a shock to realise that he had seized this opportunity to
creep up on me. I suddenly felt him spreading his great, feathery bulk over my back, almost precipitating me into the nest on top of the eggs; he laid his long neck over my shoulder and then,
twisting his head round, peered into my face benignly from a distance of about six inches, at the same time producing a sound deep inside his breast that sounded like a mad tap-dancer in a pair of
army boots cavorting on a bass drum. Not being quite sure how to cope with these advances I just stared into the bird’s hypnotic blue eyes and did nothing. He had now twisted his head almost
upside down, presumably to see if my face looked more attractive this way up. He gave another burst of drumming and then, digging his feet into the ground, pushed me inexorably towards the nest
– I felt that the implication was that I should share with him his labour of love, but I had better things to do than squat on a lot of emu eggs. Slowly, so as not to give offence, I rose to
my feet and retreated. The emu watched me go sadly; his expression implied that he had hoped of better things from me. Then he stood up, shuffled his feathers with a sound like an oak tree in a
summer breeze, stepped forward to the nest and lowered himself delicately on to his precious eggs.