The little koala that could

When Albert was five months old, no one was sure whether he'd live to see Christmas. But thanks to 'koala whisperer' Hayley Shute, he's thriving.

- SAMANTHA TRENOWETH

When Hayley Shute first set eyes on Albert, she wasn’t sure he would make it. “He was tiny,” says the Life Sciences Manager and resident ‘koala whisperer’ at the Australian Reptile Park on the NSW Central Coast. “I looked at him when he came out of the pouch and thought, ‘This isn’t going to be a happy ending’. He was five months old and 190 grams. The smallest koala I’d ever successfully hand-raised was 290 grams. At that size, they’re so dependent on their mum. But I wasn’t going to not try. He looked up at me and I went, ‘Oh God, I’m already in love with him.’ So I took on the task.”

The task would be to separate the little joey from his mother, and to bottle-feed and care for him for six months. It had come to this because Albert’s mother, Elsa, had not been thriving.

“Generally, they put weight on when they have a joey,” says Hayley, “but Elsa started to lose weight. We were watching and monitoring. You don’t want to take the joey if you don’t have to but also, if she’s losing weight, you don’t know whether she’s going to stop producing milk and the joey could die in the pouch. Or, she could throw him out of the pouch, which marsupials do if they’re fighting off a sickness and trying to save themselves.”