FOSTER CARE AND RECENT COMMISSIONS

SMALL, ARBOREAL, NOCTURNAL
Commission for April Golder

The remaking of things
NGV commission for Melbourne Now 2023

Mid October last year, we met Sid, Noodles, Feeney, and Finnius, a quartet of ringtail joey orphans. Last weekend, on the 5th of March, 2023, with the largest of the quartet weighing a healthy 803 grams, we took them to the property in Balliang where we’d soft released Ada, Agnès, Violet, and Hilda, and in a spot further along, we set up the soft release trailer once more with the tireless help of Janine and several Koala Clancy members. After several months in care, giving them the best chance is vital.

(Congratulations, also, to Pelé and Fred, our fifth and sixth pups of the season, who graduated from crèche at Bat Rescue Bayside to Soft Release at Yarra Bend the day before.)

Animals in wildlife foster care need to be healthy and able to return to the wild, but you also need to be able to find somewhere to safely release them when they are ready; it wouldn’t be a soft release from one environment to the next if it didn’t entail the food, shelter, and monitoring. And as orphan joeys, possums that come into care have no habitat of their own to return to, so we need to find somewhere where there are no other possums nearby (possums are territorial, and we owe them a good start after their hard beginning and the trauma of being orphaned), somewhere where there are not too many known predators either (to allow them the time to find their feet), and also, somewhere where there is plenty of food for them to survive, and somewhere where they can find nest materials and make a drey or two or three upon release. All things not dissimilar to our own list for making a safe and secure home for ourselves.

This next group of possums will mean there are eight inhabitants in this beautiful, lush, little forest of fifteen-year-old growth. Together, in this promising spot, they will make a plushness of possums. And this is a wonderful thing for the ringtails, the earth they’ll fertilise, the habitat they’ll be an important, connecting part of, the cycle of all things. This part, for us, is also why we do what we do, when we can.

As four more nest boxes were installed, one for each possum, we checked on the existing nest boxes, and were delighted to chance upon Agnès and Hilda, curled up together in the nest box farthest from their original release site. (See them pictured below, amidst details from our collage, The remaking of things, and recent reads.) Since December last year, they’ve made it all the way around to the grey box, and they both looked so healthy and plush. So very encouraging!

Over the coming days, Janine and a band of Koala Clancy volunteers will provide Sid and friends with fresh water and new browse daily. As before, they’ll remove any spent browse, and mix in local temptations to help the ringtails’ acclimatise. Thrillingly, whilst doing so, Janine discovered Ada and Violet in the nest box in the red gum they fell beholden to upon their release. We are overjoyed that all four possums from the first group have now been sighted and are doing so remarkably well. Incentive, should it be flagging, if ever there was.

We wonder what Agnès and friends think of seeing the trailer parked once more. Have they been over to see if anyone is inside? Did they inspect the buckets of browse by the side of the trailer on the first night and recall those early days?

We wonder, too, what Sid and friends think of their new surrounds? It’s not too long now until we open the hatch and let them make their way out when they are ready. From what we have heard so far, it sounds as though Feeney, who was always first out of the nest box, will continue his ‘hello there’ up front pattern, but we’ll have to wait and see what the trail camera reveals.

Thank-you to everyone involved with this fledgling soft release program with Koala Clancy Foundation. Thank-you to everyone for following the tales of Agnès, Sid et al., and growing with us on this journey.

From ringtails to Leadbeater’s possums, we were recently commissioned to create artwork for April Golder’s A Cry for the Leadbeater’s Possum.

April is working on a project to highlight the effects of native logging on Australia's fauna as part of a University of Melbourne's Wattle Fellowship, for which we created three collages featuring photographs of an endangered Leadbeater’s possum (Gymnobelideus leadbeateri) before their nest (in the collection of Museums Victoria, 1867), and against a night sky, shimmering with insects and microbats.

‘We can’t afford to get this wrong’: relocating Leadbeater’s possums is risky — but it’s their only chance

Image credit: Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, Arboreal (detail) from the series Small, Arboreal, Nocturnal, 2023, especially for April Golder’s A Cry for the Leadbeater’s Possum