Night of the Possums

Saturday night, on a tip from Aoife, we went down to Catani park (which is set back about 20 feet from St. Kilda Beach) on a possum hunt. We had heard that they only come out at dusk (about 8.30pm here at the moment) and we were a full hour early so we walked along the beach and watched one of Melbourne's magnificent sunsets. It's probably got a lot to do with the lack of rain, but most evenings the sky is truly spectacular for about a 20-25 minute window.

Every evening the entire length of the beach is peppered with people flying these huge kites which look capable of carrying their owners off into the ocean and indeed every now and then a particularly strong gust will drag one of them into the water, kicking and splashing. Looks like great fun and we'll probably try and rent one or something at a later date.

By 8.30, armed with an apple and a stale crumpet (thank God for small miracles, they sell crumpets in the supermarket next to us!) we settled ourselves in the park and waited for the possums. The first one we saw saw us too. Peering out of the top of a twenty foot palm tree it let out out a low threatening guttural growl that gave us a moment of pause. Despite looking like a cuddly obese squirrel he sounded like what I imagine a Tazmanian devil warming up would sound like.


We backed off for awhile and let him climb down and soon noticed that most of the trees were shedding at least one possum. One must have lost his footing as he came down like a coconut, but despite the thump picked himself up and waddled off. Kind of like cats but without their grace. Once on the ground and fully awake, they were a lot less edgy and would come right up to you to be fed, taking food right out of your hand. The strength of their eyesight is questionable. They appeared to be hearing the food hit the ground, only seeing it when they came close.

About half of the trees in the park have a strip of hard plastic sheeting wrapped around the circumference of the trunk about 16 feet or so above the ground. Ostensibly this is too keep the possum population down by denying them access to these trees, although quite what anyone would have against them is any one's guess. Still, one person's fat squirrel is another's climbing rat. Last week, Aoife met two old women who were spear-heading a movement to protect the present possum population (the PPPP?) and tried to recruit her to go with them to city hall and lodge their complaint against the measures being taken to keep them down.

We noticed also that in the case of many of the branded trees, someone had fixed a length of metal tubing, about 10" in diameter, half way around the trunk and a couple of feet below the plastic. I suspect that these may be counter measures launched by the PPPP to ensure that the possums have somewhere to sleep.

We checked them out on-line after and apparently they're the common Brushtail Possum. There were no warnings of diseases or anything so we went back the following night and this time used up four apples and a hunk of bread. Cute little things, but we held off from actually touching them in case they turned nasty.

Ok, for those of you not wholly gripped by all things possum, here are some other things that we've been doing. I started college today. It was mostly more orientation but, this time, of a more detailed and useful variety. We were also given our schedule for the year. For the most part we're in class from 10am to 2pm, Monday to Thursday. All other time, including Fridays is dubbed Prac time during which we are to use darkrooms, studio space, go location shooting or anything else that takes our fancy. So, I'll be able to get a part-time job and still leave plenty of time for "prac" without too much difficulty. There is also quite alot of hands-on training scheduled throughout the year, which promises to be very rewarding.

Cass is continuing to get temp work by the day, though consistently enough to fill out a week. She's vying for typing work (over envelope stuffing) as it'll pay better. We went bike shopping today as we have a half plan to go on a cycling trip this weekend. We were given the address of a second-hand dealer which we'll check out tomorrow.

Finally, we started the 1-2 week process of getting broadband in our apartment and when we do, we'll be fully Skype-able. When we do we'll stay in more personal contact. Maybe.