As far as school holiday happenings go, this one tops them all.
A family has spotted and recorded a koala in a Tuggeranong suburb, something one expert described as a "really rare" occurrence.
Koalas are listed as endangered in the ACT, due to habitat loss since European settlement.
While there is a captive population of koalas at Tidbinbilla, a survey as late as 2018 did not find any koalas or any evidence of koalas in the wild in the ACT.
But there has been the occasional sighting. In 2014, a koala was spotted near the Canberra airport. Another was seen at Oaks Estate in 2021. A koala was spotted in 2024 in the far north of the ACT, putting on hold the development of houses at Jacka at the time. A dead koala was found nearby the following year.
Brooke and Brad Trotter and their sons Ryan, 13, and Beau, 10, were driving home from a family dinner on Tuesday night when Brooke spotted something in the trees.
The family, at the time, was driving on the Monaro Highway, adjacent to Theodore.
"I spotted two glowing eyes in the tree and a little round face. At first I thought it was an owl," Brooke said.
"I said to my husband, 'I think I just saw a koala'."
They decided to turn back and investigate and, sure enough, there was a koala in the tree, staring back at the excited family.
"If it had been turned the other way, I wouldn't have seen anything. So it was just pot luck," Brooke said.
A carer of wombats, Brooke said the family watched the koala for only a couple of minutes, not wanting to upset it.
"My younger son loves koalas so he was very excited," she said.
The family had never seen a koala in the ACT, other than at Tidbinbilla. To see one so close to suburbia had been almost surreal.
"It was an incredible experience and I'm so glad the four of us were together," she said.
Koala expert Dr Kara Youngentob, a research fellow with the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University, said it was rare to see a koala so close to the Canberra suburbs.
"You don't often see koalas in the ACT but there have been sightings and they seem to be occurring more often," she said.
Dr Youngentob said the loss of habitat due to expanding development had made the koala endangered in the ACT.
"I think it emphasises how important it is to preserve the habitat we have left," she said.
Dr Youngentob said the koala population in the Southern Tablelands of NSW was stable and might be expanding. The sighting of the koala in Tuggeranong was positive.
"I think it is a great thing," she said.
She said if enough native trees rather than exotics were planted in developing suburbs, koalas might be not an unusual sight in the ACT, in the same way they were often spotted in the Adelaide Hills.
"If there is enough good food, we could share the landscape with them, which would be really cool," she said.
James Fitzgerald runs the Two Thumbs Wildlife Trust near Cooma, a 728 hectare koala sanctuary. (The trust's name came from the koala's two thumbs.)
He said the sighting of the koala at Tuggeranong was "really rare" but also good news.
"It's evidence the population is growing and potentially moving north," he said.
Mr Fitzgerald believed in the mountain range east of the Monaro Highway between Canberra and Cooma, there could be a koala population as large as 10,000.
"Indications over many years, are that this koala population is growing. There have been previous koala sightings in Canberra and I expect more koala sightings in Canberra in the years to come," he said.
He said in December, 2024, a single wildlife acoustic song meter was installed on his property and in two weeks recorded 290 koala "bellows".
"Amazing for an area that was destroyed by the Black Summer bushfires," he said.
Mr Fitzgerald said the I Spy Koala app helps to collect important information when people spotted a koala.
