Koalaland or The Great Koala Novel - Volume I: The Making of a Kingdom

by David Bolton

  ***

  The sun was setting as the Judge, Handy and little Joey arrived at the eastern edge of Eucalyptus Grove. Koby, Joey’s best friend, had seen them coming.

  “Oh, no!” he thought to himself, “Joey must have gotten himself into trouble again. A good thing I hadn’t gone over to Koalaville yet.”

  Joey spotted Koby standing between two trees, and asked Handy if he might go talk to him.

  “I suppose so,” Handy replied, “but remember: no more crossing that field again alone or you’ll have to answer to me.”

  “Oh, no sir. I won’t do it again, I promise!”

  “Okay then,” Judge Grandaddy said to Joey, “run along now.”

  “Bye!” Joey blurted out to them as he began to scamper over to Koby.

  “Joey! What happened? How did you let them catch you like that? You know we’re not supposed to go over there. How could you be so dumb and let them see you?” Koby asked angrily.

  “Hah! A lot you know! If Handy hadn’t seen me, I’d be dead right now,” Joey answered.

  “Dead? What are you talking about?” Koby inquired.

  “Well, if a big hawk picks you up and takes you home for dinner, you’re dead real soon, and that’s what almost happened to me!” Joey explained excitedly. He then went on to relate the whole story, and Koby could tell that this wasn’t another one of his tall tales; Joey was far too animated to be lying.

  “Oh, wow! You mean that hawk almost got you?”

  “Another few seconds, and I would have been history. That Handy shoots a stone like no koala I’ve ever seen. I think he hit it right on its ugly head, and it was flying really fast!”

  “Well, when your mother finds out, you’ll wish that bird had killed you,” Koby remarked. He knew how strict Hana, Joey’s mother, could be, and how angry she could get when Joey made mischief.

  “Yeah, I know. Not enough that I almost get killed, now I’m gonna get punished, too. Oooh, why did I go over there in the first place?” Joey whined.

  “It was all your dumb idea. Why did you have to walk right in the middle of the field? Couldn’t you have walked through the forest, like everybody else does?” Koby chided him.

  “How was I supposed to know some bird would see me? Fine thing that is. You can’t even walk across a field these days without having to fear for your life.”

  “Yeah, but that’s the way it’s always been, and I guess it’s the way it always will be. Just be glad you’re still alive. I don’t want to lose my best friend!”

  “I don’t want to lose me either, so we agree on that. Hey, why don’t we get our anteaters and take a ride around the grove?” Joey suggested.

  “Don’t you think you’d better go home?” Koby asked.

  “Home! And get punished right away? No way! There’s always time for that. Let’s go get the anteaters.”

  The anteater was one of two animals that the koalas had managed to domesticate, and indeed, the long-snouted creatures were quite useful. They were raised by Choty and Mo, two diligent koalas who had become quite well-off by renting out the anteaters to koalas who liked to keep them tied to the base of their tree, so that the creatures would eat any ants that began to crawl up the trunk. Some smaller anteaters could even climb, and would comb the trees branch by branch, slurping up all the ants they found. Many koalas rented this type for a few days, for after all, there were few things more disagreeable than picking a leaf and biting into it, only to feel an ant wiggling around in your mouth as you chewed! With a hungry anteater at the base of your tree, and perhaps also a little one in the branches, your leaves would be virtually ant-free.

  A few koalas had discovered that they could ride an anteater. True, the average anteater didn’t like it very much when a koala first climbed onto his back; he would take little leaps, and swirl around in circles, trying to get the rider to fall off, but to no avail: a lifetime of climbing trees gave the koala a strong grip, and no amount of wild gyrations on the part of the anteater was sufficient to throw him to the ground. Invariably, the anteater would give in after no more than an hour or so, and after that, didn’t seem to mind much when a koala wanted to ride him.

  Joey, and his friend Koby, who was about a year older, were both still children. Yet they had the distinction of being among the very first koalas to become experts at riding anteaters. Not that they really needed to. They could walk from one side of the grove to the other in fifteen minutes or so, and weren’t allowed to travel outside the grove on their own anyway. But for them, the anteaters were more like pets – even friends – than mere useful beasts.

  True, anteaters couldn’t talk, and to any objective observer, didn’t seem very intelligent. But somehow, Joey and Koby felt that the anteaters understood them, in their own way. And ever since their parents had bought them their own anteaters, back when the prices were very low, both of the young koalas took excellent care of their pets, cleaning the anteaters’ fur regularly with a special brush, giving them all the exercise they needed, and above all, making sure they found a sufficient number of ants to keep their bellies full.

  That wasn’t much of a problem, since the forest, which began at the northern edge of the grove and extended both eastward and westward, connecting Eucalyptus Grove with Koalaville in the east, and with Koalatown in the west, had more than its share of anthills. They had only to lead the anteaters into the forest, and before long, the creatures had sniffed out an anthill, and were soon using their sharp claws to dig up the entrance, after which they used their long, sticky tongues to slurp out the ants, sometimes catching as many as seventy or eighty with a single dart of the tongue. Not a very appetizing sight, to be sure, yet Joey and Koby knew that after all, anteaters had to eat ants, or they wouldn’t be called anteaters, would they?

  The two had tied their pets to Koby’s tree earlier that afternoon. They now walked towards it, carefully peering upwards to see whether Koby’s parents were there. They were there all right, but both appeared to be taking a nap, so they wouldn’t give them any trouble. The two young koalas quietly untied their anteaters and led them by their reins away from the tree, walking for thirty or forty yards before climbing onto their backs and continuing northward.

  “My anteater seems pretty hungry. He seems really anxious to get to the forest,” said Joey.

  “Yeah, mine too,” Koby answered. “Not so fast, boy,” he said, patting his anteater on the head, “we’ll be in the forest before you know it.”

  At the Council Table

  “Grandaddy! Where have you been? You know we couldn’t start the game without you!” Doctor Koala was peeved, as he always was when their daily card game was delayed. He had them in his hands, and was shuffling them mechanically.

  “Now, Doctor, don’t get upset, we have plenty of time to play. Have a seat, Grandaddy,” said the King, who was sitting on a chair at the head of the roughly hewn wooden table that was placed at the upper-right end of a small clearing at the lower edge of the “Royal Arboreal Complex,” that area at the southern tip of Eucalyptus Grove where the monarch lived, and carried out his official functions on a day-to-day basis.

  The King was used to smoothing things out between his two older friends. His gentle demeanor, natural diplomatic talent, good will, tolerance for the weaknesses of others and generally noble behavior had, after all, been the main reasons why he had been chosen to be the leader of Eucalyptus Grove just before the migration several months earlier, even though he had barely reached middle age.

  Of only average height, the sovereign was nonetheless physically quite strong, though this wasn’t immediately obvious. Despite his exalted position in the grove, he only wore his fancy royal garments and crown on solemn occasions. On normal days, he dressed quite modestly, a simple pair of navy blue, unadorned overalls being his clothing of choice. The dark blue bib of the garment formed a noble-looking contrast to the pure white fur on his chest, a genetic trait present in a number of koalas of all ages, even those whose other b
odily hair was a darker shade of gray, as was the monarch’s.

  “I’m sure Grandaddy has a good reason for being late,” the leader smiled.

  “Well, this time I do indeed,” the Judge said. He then went on to tell the whole story of Joey, the hawk, and Handy’s expert shot.

  “Why, that is remarkable,” the King wondered aloud. “Imagine, hitting a hawk in mid-air, right in the middle of its dive! Doctor Koala, remind me to commend Handy when I see him.”

  “Pure luck, if you ask me,” replied the Doctor. “Oh, I know that Handy can handle a slingshot as well as anybody around, but to hit a hawk in the head at that speed? Pure luck, I say. That Joey can be glad he’s still in one piece, which he may not be for long, once his mother hears about it.”

  “No need to worry about that,” said Grandaddy. “I convinced Handy not to tell Hana anything. You know how she is.”

  “Good for you!” Doctor Koala exclaimed. “The last time Joey got into trouble, Hana was convinced he needed some medicine or another to ‘calm him down’, as she put it, and she bothered me for a half hour, trying to make me give her some potion that would make him behave better.”

  “What did she say when you refused?” asked the King.

  “Refused? Why, I gave her some mint tonic,” the Doctor replied.

  “Mint tonic? Since when does that make a young koala change his behavior?” the Judge asked.

  “Well, I know it doesn’t do any such thing, but the point is, I got her to believe it does, so I gave her a bottle of it. Only way to get rid of her.”

  “Why, Doctor Koala!” the King laughed. “I do believe you’re an old charlatan!”

  “An old charlatan that needs his daily nap,” Doctor Koala chuckled as he removed his spectacles for a moment and gently rubbed his right eye, “and that Hana has a knack for always calling on me just when I’m about to fall asleep.”

  Doctor Koala, despite his occasionally gruff manners, was perhaps the most respected citizen of Southern Koalaland. Already past middle age, but not yet a so-called senior citizen, he seemed older than his years, no doubt the result of constant overwork. His brownish fur was now streaked with a softer, grey-white color. Never one to fret about how he was dressed, Doctor Koala nonetheless possessed two pairs of overalls, one brown, the other a very dark green, though both had faded over time, since they had been washed so often, this being a necessary measure where a medicine koala’s apparel was concerned. His pace was slow and somewhat deliberate when he walked, and sometimes showed traces of a limp, though as far as anyone knew, he had never been seriously injured. It was almost as if he were weary of walking from one end of the grove to the other, every single day, tending to those koalas whose debilities didn’t permit them to come to the little shack at the base of his tree which he affectionately, yet rather exaggeratedly, called his “hospital”.

  But tired though he often was, nothing could ever stop Doctor Koala from making his rounds. His sense of duty had formed the habit, which had long since become a veritable addiction. Despite his frequent complaints, he would most probably be visiting the sick until he himself passed on to a better world. Countless nights of study, writing, classification of thousands of medicinal plants and herbs, and scientific experimentation had taken their toll on his vision, which he corrected with a pair of spectacles that old Mr. Johnson, the koalas’ only human friend, had given to him a couple of years before.

  Doctor Koala didn’t have much of the diplomat in him. He could be direct to the point of incivility, and wouldn’t hesitate to insult a patient outright if he saw that his orders weren’t being followed. He had argued, at some time or another, with at least half the koalas in the grove, but nobody could ever hold a grudge against him, for they knew that he had dedicated his entire life to helping the sick, and to doing his best to see to it that the healthy ones stayed that way. But that in no way meant that his patients didn’t quarrel with him frequently, for despite his compassion, Doctor Koala could be quite cantankerous at times.

  “Sometimes I think I should just go off somewhere to an island, where there isn’t a sick koala to be found,” the Doctor said to the King and Grandaddy. “After all, it’s like fighting a losing battle here. Take that Warooey, for instance. He came to me last week with a cut lip, and bruises all over his face, and told me he had fallen out of his tree.”

  “Well,” Judge Grandaddy commented, “no wonder his face was bruised.”

  “Hah! As if I didn’t know the signs of an old-fashioned fistfight!” Doctor Koala continued in a sarcastic tone. “That no-good devil got himself into a brawl, then got beat up, didn’t want to admit it, and to top it off, thought he could lie to me, his Doctor. And when I told him what I thought of that, he called me an old quack!”

  “What did you say that made him say such a thing?” the King inquired.

  “Why, I told him that if he lied to me like that again, I might just punch him in the snoot myself!” Doctor Koala answered.

  The Judge and the King laughed heartily at that. “Well, Doctor, Warooey always did get himself into trouble, and for his kind, it’s not easy to admit he lost a fight,” Grandaddy explained. “And no wonder he calls you a quack if you threaten to punch him!” he added, still chuckling.

  Even Doctor Koala couldn’t hold back a smile. “Well, maybe I did exaggerate a bit, but the truth is, I’m getting sick of having to patch up koalas, give them potions, or whatever, just because they do everything they can to damage their health. I ought to go on strike some day. Then maybe they’d wise up and start taking care of themselves for a change, instead of always running to me for the least little thing.”

  “Oh, Doc,” the King smiled, “if you forgive me for saying so, you’ve been complaining for as long as I’ve known you. But do you know what? I think that deep down in your heart, you love every single koala in this grove. That’s why you chose your profession, and that’s why you’ll never give it up.”

  “Hah!” the Doctor scoffed, “I just don’t want to see any of them drop dead before their time, that’s all. And if you’ll forgive me for saying so, you’re our King, not a psychologist, so I’ll thank you for stop trying to analyze me!”

  The King and Grandaddy both broke out laughing again. There weren’t many koalas who would dare to speak in such a tone to their monarch, but the King could never take offence at anything Doctor Koala said. He knew him too well for that. The Doctor had been a friend of his family since before the King was a king at all, and even before that: Doc had been his physician since he was a small koala baby. For the King, Doctor Koala was almost family, and more so since all of the King’s immediate relatives had passed away.

  “Now, if you two will stop bickering, maybe we can get this card game started,” Judge Grandaddy suggested with a smile, taking the cards from Doctor Koala and shuffling them deftly.

  “It’s about time,” Doctor Koala agreed. “Deal them, Grandaddy. I can’t wait to beat you this time. You took me for all I was worth last week!”

  “And I might just do it again this week, too,” the Judge replied, slowly and deliberately.

  “Not if I can help it,” the King chimed in. “I plan to wallop both of you this time, so let’s get started!” The three friends chatted on as they began their daily game of “Lost Koala Found”.

  After a couple of hours, Doctor Koala decided to go, for he wished to take his nap. The King was about to retire to his tree as well, but Grandaddy told him he would like to speak with him alone.

  “Sire, as you may know, Handy and I were over in Koalaville this morning,” the Judge began.

  “Oh, yes, you had said that you wanted to mark off some of the land there in order to improve our map. How did it go?” the King inquired.

  “Very well, Sire. Handy hammered a number of stakes into the ground to mark off the main sections. Then we did some measuring. But that’s not what I wished to talk to you about.”

  “Well, what is it, then?” the ruler was curious.
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br />   “Sire, Handy and I walked up into the forest, since we wanted to mark some territory there as well. A short distance into the forest, we saw a number of huge boulders, which form a sort of circle.”

  “Oh, yes, those huge rocks. I saw them myself often, when I used to go up to the forest and collect berries,” the King reminisced.

  “Yes, Sire, no doubt many of us have seen them over the years. Well, anyway, we walked around them, and saw that they did indeed form a circle, so we got curious about what was in the middle. Handy and I climbed up to the top of a boulder, and looked down into the space below. What we saw was most disconcerting.”

  “Huh? What did you see?” the King’s curiosity was piqued.

  “Sire, we saw a huge round object. I don’t know what to call it, for I have never seen such a thing before. Seen from above, it seemed to be perfectly circular in shape, and was flattened at the top, sort of like if you took a berry and squeezed it a bit. But this thing was huge, and seemed to be made of some kind of silvery-colored metal,” Grandaddy explained to him.

  “How do you know what it was made out of?” the King wondered.

  “Handy took a stone, and threw it down onto the object, and it made a metallic sound. It sounded as though it might even be hollow inside. And what was even more unusual was that the edges of the boulders extended inwards over the circumference of the object by a few inches, so that we couldn’t see any way how the thing could have ever fit into that space in the first place, unless the rocks were placed there after the object, yet those boulders have been there for as long as anyone can remember. We saw no signs that they had been moved, and besides, they are so big that nobody could ever move them anyway.”

  “Grandaddy, are you sure this isn’t something you dreamed last night?”

  “Oh, no, Your Highness, it was no dream. Ask Handy. He will confirm what I am telling you.”

  “Well, if this is true – and I do believe you, of course – then why hasn’t anyone ever seen this thing before? All koalas are excellent climbers, so it is hardly conceivable that over all these years, no-one would have thought of climbing up on one of the boulders to see what was in the middle,” the monarch mused.

  “That’s exactly what Handy and I thought, Your Majesty,” Grandaddy went on. “Neither of us could figure out why nobody had seen that thing before. When we got back here a few hours ago, I asked two of our friends – Chashibu and Chosay, two of the oldest koalas in the grove, as you well know – if they had ever noticed the boulders in the course of their long lives, and both said they had, yet neither could recall ever climbing up to see what was in the middle, nor had they ever heard of anyone having done so. And even stranger was that they themselves were somewhat perplexed that they had never even been curious about it. I asked them to not mention this affair to anyone, as I wanted to discuss it with you, so that we could decide what course to take.”

  “Yes, I see,” the King stroked his furry chin. “I don’t know what to make of it. Are we to believe that no-one, during all the years that we lived in Koalaville, ever climbed those boulders? Hardly thinkable, if you ask me. Yet if they did, why didn’t anyone ever report having seen that funny object? Surely most peculiar.”

  “I don’t have any explanation either, Sire,” Grandaddy replied. “What do you suggest we do?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all, at least for the moment. You know, Grandaddy, many things are happening now in Eucalyptus Grove. We will soon have a school and a monetary system; we will be establishing closer relations with our neighbors… all this in such a short time. I see no sense in getting everyone excited about some strange object that even we can’t explain. If nobody noticed it before, maybe nobody will in the future, either. Nonetheless, when we have time, we can plan to send an exploratory group over there to investigate the matter further. Until then, I suggest we simply not worry about it.”

  “Yes, Sire, I was thinking the same thing. Handy won’t tell anyone, and neither will Chashibu and Chosay. There was no sign that it’s dangerous, and as you say, there are many other, more pressing issues we will have to deal with in the next few months. We’ll just put it on hold for a while,” Grandaddy said.

  “It’s agreed, then,” the King replied. “Have a nice nap, Grandaddy. Maybe I’ll see you later this evening.”

  “Thank you, Sire. Have a good nap yourself. Till later, then!”

  The Judge walked off towards his tree, his mind filled with unanswerable questions about the strange, inexplicable object that had made this day one of the most unusual in his long life.

  Maki Koala

  “Maki! Maki Koala, are you up there?” Handy, standing at the base of her tree, called.

  “Why yes, I am, Handy,” Maki, a carpenter koala, looked down at him from the window of her tree house. “I’ll be right down.”

  She opened the trap door in the floor of the house and started down the ladder that led to the ground. After descending, she turned to him. “How are you today, Handy?”

  “Fine, just fine. I thought I would come over and bring you that wood you ordered. It’s right here in my wagon.” He pulled a cover off the cargo in the rear of the open-backed wooden wagon, to which two sturdy anteaters were hitched in the front.

  “My, that looks like wonderful wood! And some of the pieces are long enough to make floor boards!” Maki was delighted.

  “Well, I know you have several orders for tree houses, so you’ll need as many long boards as you can get. I’m just sorry I couldn’t smooth them out a bit more.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that, Handy. After all, I’m a carpenter. I have all the tools I need to smooth down and sand the pieces, but without your help, we never could have brought them here from Koalaville. There is so much lumber we left there when we all moved over to Eucalyptus Grove, and I suspect it’ll be months before we’re able to have everything transported over here. Wait, I’ll go up and get your pay.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to pay me now. I’ve got some work to attend to, and don’t need the almonds now.”

  “All right, but they’re here whenever you want to come over and get them. I’ll tell my father how much it costs, so maybe he can pay you when you see him,” Maki assured him.

  “Well, I’ll be over in Koalaville again in a couple of days. I’ll bring back some more wood, and you can pay me for the lot when I deliver it.”

  “Fine,” said Maki. “Can’t I help you unload it?”

  “No, it’s pretty heavy. I’d better do it.” Maki watched as Handy unloaded the larger pieces of wood. “Well, I can at least take out the small pieces,” she said, and began to do just that.

  Handy couldn’t help but admire Maki, as did almost every koala who knew her. Always even-tempered and polite, she had built a reputation for herself by helping her father to craft the very first tree houses in Southern Koalaland, all of them based on their own designs. She had constructed her first one a few years before, back when they all lived in Koalaville, and had made several others, though the last one remained incomplete, since the sudden migration to Eucalyptus Grove had rendered it senseless to even consider finishing it, for there would no longer be anyone there to use it.

  Nonetheless, the experience she had gathered while making tree houses had taught Maki a lot about how to form the boards for the floor, shaping them just right so that they made a natural fit with the tree branches on which they rested, and had taught her the value of crafting wooden joints to hold the boards together, instead of relying on nails. Experiments had shown her that which her father had always told her: due to the gentle swaying of the branches, nails would eventually come loose, and the boards would separate. Joints, on the other hand, offered flexibility as well as strength to the construction; a tree house whose boards were held together by joints would almost always last for many years. Maki Koala was a perfectionist by nature, for whom quality was a must in everything she did.

  Maki was a young adult koala in her best years, and though modest
and unassuming, possessed an attractiveness of the kind valued by those who were capable of seeing beyond the superficial – which is not to suggest she was homely. Indeed, her grey fur was delightfully soft, and shimmered in the sunlight. Her nose, more pinkish brown than black, was relatively small. Her hands, skilled yet delicate, seldom gestured when she spoke, and when they did, they always moved with a sort of simple grace that revealed at once both great refinement as well as natural femininity, qualities not in the least diminished by the plain grey overalls she usually wore while she was working.

  But her most attractive feature was her eyes: dark, very gentle eyes that reflected common sense and uncommon perception, as well as knowledge of the kind that isn’t gained from books, but that seems to be innate, the sort of “knowing” that many equate with what we call wisdom. Maki Koala was wise beyond her years, and that quality, coupled with her compassion for all creatures, great and small, was what made everyone sense that she was truly someone very special.

  “I guess I’ll be going now, Maki,” Handy said, climbing up onto the wagon’s seat and picking up the reins.

  “Good-bye Handy, and thanks again. You were such a big help!”

  “Glad to oblige. I’ll see you in a few days.” He shook the reins, and the anteaters began to move, pulling the wagon with relative ease now that the wood had been unloaded. “Bye! And give my best regards to your father!” he called back to her.

  “Thank you! I will!”

  Maki picked up a large waterproof cloth that was neatly folded up next to the base of the tree. She carefully unfolded it and then spread it out over the pile of wood, in order to make sure it was protected. She would go to work sanding the boards the next morning. But now, she wanted to go prepare supper. Her father would be home soon, and she was looking forward to a nice meal with him. After supper, they would settle down for a good night’s sleep. Maki always thought that was the best part of the day!

  Description of Southern Koalaland

  Eucalyptus Grove had only been populated for a few months. Prior to that, it was off limits to koalas, as it belonged to a human who would only give it up for a rather large sum of money. Yet at that time, the koalas not only had no money: they didn’t even know what it was. Thus, the central grove of the three that were placed from east to west, spaced at four or five hundred yards one from the other, and that were connected at their northern ends by a dense, uninterrupted forest, thereby forming the heart of Southern Koalaland, was virtually untouched – except for the occasional squirrel, and the birds that built their nests in the trees.

  About four hundred and fifty yards to the west of Eucalyptus Grove was Koalatown, which was amply populated: nearly three thousand koalas were at home there. It was the largest of the three groves, yet it was certainly not the most beautiful. The trees not growing as densely as in the other two, it had less shade; the leaves of the eucalyptus trees there were not of the finest quality, though they were edible.

  Koalatown might nonetheless have been a rather attractive place, if its inhabitants had cared for it more. But the truth be told, the tree dwellers of Koalatown were not koalas of the highest breeding. To put it plainly, they were for the most part a motley bunch. Some had ancestors that had lived there for centuries, yet others were the offspring of two or three wilder types of koala whose forebears had come from primitive groves far to the east, or else from ones now abandoned, located on the northern side of Koala Mountain, whose southern slope began its steep ascent only about fifty yards into the woods at the northern end of Koalatown. This assortment of semi-savage koalas, who often quarrelled and were even violent at times, was of course hard to keep under control, all the more so because most of them resented discipline of any kind, and were quick to rebel if anyone tried to limit their freedom.

  This is no doubt why latter-day Koalatown had adopted a democratic system of government, which guaranteed a great deal of freedom to its citizens (more than some of the elders among them thought reasonable, to be sure), and whose electoral system provided them with the opportunity to choose a new leader if they got fed up with the present one. Looking out across the field east of Koalatown, the view was splendid, for Eucalyptus Grove could be seen there in the near distance, its dense green trees and other foliage providing a delight to the eye of any red-blooded koala.

  To the north, as already mentioned, was the forest, dark and enticing, and offering a safe way to take a walk eastwards if any koala wanted to go over to Eucalyptus Grove to pick a basket of fresh leaves. All agreed that the leaves there were of the finest quality, their rich, refreshing taste fulfilling the promise made by their exquisite aroma. The human owner of the grove lived far away, in Human City, and though he refused to let koalas settle there – probably fearing that if he did, the law might soon grant them permission to stay permanently – he didn’t seem to care if they went over to pick leaves, no doubt because he had no way of knowing that they did so.

  At the western border of Koalatown was a road, leading south to north. Like all roads in Koalaland, it was unpaved, which made travel difficult when the rains came, and converted the soil into a sea of mud. But when the weather was nice, one could travel northwards up the road, between Koalatown on one’s right and Boar Forest to the left, and journey past the western slope of Koala Mountain. Continuing even farther for a half hour or so by wagon, one came to the wide, majestic, though largely barren expanses of the Great Koala Plain, so forbidding in its vastness that it was only relatively recently that the koalas had begun to travel across it. But there was good reason to do so, for after a wagon journey of about a day and a half, moving steadily northwards, one arrived at the great Koala City, a huge grove that dwarfed even Koalatown, and whose population of over ten thousand Koalas far surpassed the entire population of Koalatown (almost 3.000) and Koalaville (about 980) put together. The establishment of regular commerce between the southern groves and Koala City, that would begin almost a year after the migration of the Koalaville koalas to Eucalyptus Grove, would prove to be a major leap the development of civilization in the south.

  Yet let us stay in Southern Koalaland for the moment. If one started out at the eastern border of Koalatown, travelled across the adjoining field, then walked all the way through Eucalyptus Grove to its other edge, one could see Koalaville in the distance, about five hundred yards away. It had been the home of almost one thousand koalas until a peculiar turn of events led to the resettlement of them all to their present home, Eucalyptus Grove, an event in recent koala history that the community thus affected refers to as “The Great Migration”.

  We will now go back several months, to mid winter, at a time when those koalas were still living in Koalaville, and had as of yet no king, so that we can see just how these changes came about.