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I have a great fondness for the Wilderness Society koalas. The baggy grey suits. The crappy little aprons strapped to their chests. The bright yellow buckets. The droopy hoods with their permanently-sad faces. There's something about grown people in fuzzy costumes that has always fascinated me. Maybe it's because there's something in me that wants to try on the suit and I know that I'm honestly too chicken to give it a go. Maybe it's just another manifestation of my love for dorky things. I don't know what it is that appeals to me so, but here are a few of my favourite koala-related memories. KOALA MEMORY #1: I hand over two dollars to a koala on Brunswick Street. "Here you go koala!" "Thankyou, human!"
A girl at a party tells me about her friend who is a koala in Sydney. Her friend had recently had an accident while on the job. She had been doing the "dead koala" routine - lying in a foetal position on a street corner - when a bunch of skinheads had turned up, put the boot in, and stolen her bucket. I try to stifle a laugh. I am both fascinated and horrified by her story.
I'm in the cinema, watching David Ceasar's patchy-but-enjoyable Idiot Box with my brother. On the screen, Ben Mendelsson and Jeremy Sims nick the bucket from a koala soliciting donations for the Olympics. My brother and I cheer the koala on as it determinedly chases them, eventually catching up with them in a cemetery and punching Sims in the guts. Koala one, Humans nil.
I'm standing at the tram stop, watching this thin, blond girl in baggy grey pants and a rainbow bikini top walk up the street. She approaches nearly everyone she passes, saying something to them before moving on. Some people chat to her amiably, others just ignore her. The tram arrives. Later that day, on the way back home, I see her again, still on the street, still walking up to people. I figure her for some kind of trendoid tripper, smacked off her gob on ecstasy, but as the tram passes her, I see that her grey pants are furry and there's the top half of a koala suit tied around her waist...
I wanted to know more about the world of the koala. I wanted to know what kind of person would wear the suit. I called the Wilderness Society and asked if I could interview one of their koalas. When they were sure I wasn't just joking, they sent Steven Luntz around.
I guess it was a couple of things, actually. One was that I'd been a member of The Wilderness Society for ages, and there was a cartoon about a World Wildlife Fund Panda who'd started collecting on Wilderness Society turf, and these three koalas hustled him into a coffee-shop and sorted out 'bear to bear' which animals had which territory. The moral of the story was: "Consensus works, even in the world of synthetic fur animals." That was the initial thing that sort of made me consider it. And then one day I came across this koala who was doing training - on the first couple of missions you get sent out with a more experienced koala. So I came across this koala who was on its first shift, with the other one, and I was taking out some money to give to the more experienced koala, and the new koala came rushing up and body-slammed the other one out of the way, and then they started wrestling over their buckets, and I thought, "I've got to give this a try!" BASED ON THAT OBSERVATION, HOW CLOSELY ALIGNED DO YOU THINK KOALAS AND STREET THEATRE ARE? Quite a lot. I think that there are a lot of different koala styles. Some of them are very straight, and others are very street theatre-ish. It depends on the individual, and how you are feeling that day. There have been days when I haven't been feeling very street-theatre, because I've just been so de-energised. WHAT'S YOUR PERSONAL KOALA STYLE? I'm more of a performer. As I've done it longer, I've moved my shifts so that I pretty much do Brunswick Street these days, it's easier to do the street theatre-ish stuff on Brunswick street than it is at Museum Station. I get a bit bouncy, and so on. I've stage dived at gigs dressed in the suit... WHO WAS PLAYING? I did it at a Caligula gig and that went really well, and the other one was a benefit for the Wilderness Society. I was exhausted, really tired, and only just managed to get up on stage and flop back, make the rounds, collect some money, then go home and sleep. A CALIGULA GIG? HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN KOALAING? I koalaed for two years, fairly solidly, and then I moved interstate, and since I've been back I do it occasionally. ARE YOU A SENIOR KOALA NOW? TRAINING PROSPECTIVE KOALAS? At the time I moved interstate, I was the most senior koala there. It's rare for people to stick it out for two years. WHAT'S INVOLVED IN TRAINING? Basically, you take people out, keep an eye on them to see that they don't do anything stupid, and give them advice. Given that every koala's style is different, not all of it will be relevant, but you outline what works for you, and go from there. If you do a particular beat, there are things that you can pass on. Like for example, there are parts of Brunswick Street that are not worth doing. There aren't enough people around, that sort of thing. So you tell them that, and what pubs they can go into, and so on.
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