Koala Hospital, Port Macquarie

Port Macquarie has (I think) the oldest koala hospital in the country. The Koala Hospital is dedicated to taking care of sick and injured koalas, generally with the intention of reintroducing them to the wild once they are healthy. Some of the oldest koalas in the hospital are permanent residents, too old or with permanent disabilities that prevent their release into the wild.

We arrived at 8am to see the morning feeding. Koalas in the wild subsist only on eucaplytus. (They also eat dirt, possibly to help with digestion.) At the hospital, they are fed milk twice a day to augment the eucalyptus diet. The koalas heal faster when given the nutritional supplement. (They are weaned off of the milk before being released into the wild.) We walked up to the outdoor enclosure in time to see Henry get fed. He quickly became my favorite. Henry is about a year old. He was found dehydrated. When we saw him, he was quite active and obviously not suffering any ill effects from his earlier bad health.

Koalas are not the brightest animals but they are incredibly cute. Unfortunately, they are often injured by run-ins with humans and their animals. Dog attacks and car accidents are leading causes of koala injury and death. There are signs throughout koala territory warning of koala crossings.

Koalas are well suited to their niche but they stress easily. Chlamydia infections are frequent in the wild; a stressed koala is less able to fight off an eye infection or a urogenital infection. Many of the koalas housed in the hospital the day we visited were undergoing treatment for chlamydia infections. One of the tasks of the hospital is to develop new treatments; when we visited four of the koalas were in a test trial of a new drug.

Some of the permanent residents in the hospital were injured in wildfires. A koala instinctively climbs to the tree tops when threatened (by fire, animals, etc). A large wildfire that spreads along the crowns can destroy an entire community of koalas. At the koala hospital, some of the permanent residents have damaged claws from burns but are otherwise completely healthy now. They do some impressive work.