I was taken from my mother when I was about six months old, by a man who was trapping bears. I don’t know how I escaped from being killed like all my relations; but I heard the man say to his friend as he caught me and popped me in a sack: “This little fellow’s a pretty one and I’ve been promised a ten-bob note for a baby’. The sack was very dark inside and I felt very frightened as I was slung over a horse’s side and carried for many miles in this manner. I knew when we left the bush track, because the smell of the gum-trees faded away; and all I could smell for many miles after seemed to be horse. Sometimes he snorted and I could have jumped out of the sack with fright if there had been a hole to jump through. After many hours we stopped, and I was taken out of the sack and handed to a lady and a little girl who were waiting outside a big house by the roadside.

“‘Isn’t he a darling!’ said the little girl as she patted me. None of them seemed to think I might be a little girl. They all called me ‘he’. I was squeezed and hugged and petted; and needless to tell you Mrs Koala, I scrambled up her arm and on to her shoulder. It was the nearest thing to a gum-tree I could see; but, alas, no gum-leaves grew there — only funny stuff all round me called hair. The little girl’s mother and father said I looked ‘so surprised’. Well now, Mrs Koala, wouldn’t any bear be surprised to find herself up a gum-tree that talked?”

Mrs Koala was too amazed to reply. She just grunted.

“The next thing that happened,” continued Mrs Grunty, “was to place me on a thing they called a cushion. It certainly was soft and cosy — but where was my snug tree-corner I wondered, and I also felt very hungry.

“‘Oh, I forgot to ask the trapper for leaves for the pet,’ said the lady.

“‘Give him some cake,’ said the man.

“They offered me some dreadful looking stuff, and of course I could not eat it, and I began to cry for my gum-tips. Then the little girl said perhaps I would like bread and milk, and she ran away to get it. I was so hungry that I ate a little and then fell asleep, as the jogging about on the horse had made my body ache and I felt very tired. They placed me in a box with a bear just like me, only he didn’t breathe and his eyes didn’t blink, and he had no smell of eucalyptus; but he was soft and cuddly like my mother. I woke in the morning, and what do you think they brought me for breakfast? Bananas!”

“He was soft and cuddly — like my mother.”

“How shocking!” gasped Mrs Koala. “And still no leaves?”

“No leaves,” sighed Mrs Grunty. “And as the day went by they became concerned about me. They offered me cheese, lollies, and even pudding to add to my sorrowful plight. I heard the little girl’s father talking about something he read in a paper in which it said: ‘During the year 1920 to 1921, two hundred and five thousand six hundred and seventy-nine koalas were killed and their skins sold to the fur market, under the name of wombat’.”

Hearing this Mrs Koala gave a jump with fright and nearly fell off her perch.

“Oh! how dreadful! It is only a short time ago that my husband was shot. And we are supposed to be protected and allowed to live. What will I do if Blinky is killed?”

“You need not worry,” said Mrs Grunty, patting her paw in a comforting way. “We are safe here. No man ever comes into this part of the bush. But I must tell you the rest of my story. These people were really trying to be kind to me. They did not wish to lose me, but it was the worst kind of kindness. As you know, I would die very quickly if I had no gum-leaves to feed on.