A FEW weeks ago we were contacted by Blake Draper, a student from Mary Immaculate Parish Primary School, Eagle Vale, who wanted to raise money for koala conservation by running a stall at the school's annual spring fete (this Saturday, 9am to 3pm).

We suggested that the best way that Blake could help local koalas was to support the Wildlife Health and Conservation Centre at Camden. This centre provides veterinary treatment for native animals and has treated several of our ear-tagged animals.

The centre has to raise its own funding and this is no easy task. So Blake's interest in the wellbeing of local koalas is serving a great cause. Please come to the fete and contribute.

Several members of the community have seen and reported more than one koala and some of these sightings have led to the koala being captured and ear-tagged.

On such occasions, the original spotter earns the right to name the koala. One multi-koala spotter is Marion Price who spotted and named Price, a male koala that has been moving across suburban Ruse for the past couple of years.

Price is a very apt name for a koala because the first written account of a koala was in a diary produced by a young man called John Price in 1798, during his journey into the region south-west of Sydney. After reporting the shooting of the first ``pheasant'' or lyrebird, Price then referred to an animal called the ``Whom-batt''.

Next, he reported the presence of koalas: ``There is another animal which the natives call a cullawine, which much resembles the Sloths in America.''

These three important observations were apparently made near Bargo, on January 26.

We had a recent sighting of Balook, a koala that we first found and ear-tagged in Balook Crescent, Bradbury, last year.

He'd turned up again on the ground at St Helens Park, a little dehydrated but otherwise apparently undamaged and spent two weeks under observation in the Camden Wildlife Health and Conservation Centre before we released him last week back at Spring Creek.