Koala Research

Meet ... Santa Barbara

Bushfire update: Santa Barbara passed away on 31st January 2006. We believe she had a bad injury to her left elbow, sustained some time before the fire, which caused her to be more tired on that very hot day that started the fire. The injury was too far gone to treat, and she was in some pain. She was put down peacefully, under a vet's care.

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This lady has been fooling us for some time, we think! We suspect we have been seeing her for a while, but she lives in an area that is hard to get access to, so often we haven't been able to get a good look. Finally, late in 2004, Belinda spent some time checking her out and we gave her a name and drew her "noseprint"!

Santa Barbara is a very relaxed older female, with a lot of the same features as Wilma and Paty. We think they might all be related. Her face is very dark and a little lined, especially around the eyes. Her nose is sensational - the white in her nostrils extends right around the bottom of her nose, with quirky lines and spots throughout.

Many of her trees are amongst tea tree scrub, banksias, casuarinas and bracken - so she must have some tunnels through the undergrowth to move around on the ground. One day we saw her moving, and while we watched she came down the tree and completely disappeared into some bracken and tea tree. We waited, expecting her to show up again in another tree, but no! She had vanished. I went into the scrub a little bit looking for her, but not another sign of her did we see that day!

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