There are lots of places in Australia where you can see captive koalas, and in Queensland you are even able to pay a few dollars to hold one, but we had no interest in this. We were desperate to see a wild koala in its natural habitat!
Our Australian road-trip took us up from Sydney to Daintree along the east coast of Australia and by the time we reached Townsville, near the end of our journey, we had been completely unsuccessful on our koala crusade. Despite spending a lot of time in koala hot spots, like Noosa National Park and Port Stephens, we hadn’t seen a single one of Australia’s sleepy stars.
In a last minute Hail Mary attempt of seeing a wild koala on our road trip we decided to catch a ferry to Magnetic Island, a wildlife paradise 10km off the coast near Townsville. Magnetic Island didn’t disappoint!
Magnetic Island is a pretty special place with over half of the island designated as a national park. According to multiple studies using scat (poo) counts and habitat surveys there are between 600 and 800 wild koalas living on Magnetic Island; one of the biggest (and healthiest) populations of koalas in Australia.
The island has a fantastic network of public transport and so when we arrived in the ferry terminal we took the bus towards horseshoe bay and hoped off at the Forts Walk trailhead. The Forts Walk takes you around beautiful eucalyptus forest and also to some old World War II military camps (when Australia thought it was going to be invaded by Japan). This walk also has a fantastic reputation for wild koala spotting.
We spent the day exploring the Forts Walk and saw about eight wild koalas! Most of them were sleeping high up in the trees but a few were munching away on eucalyptus leaves lower down near eye level.
Koalas specialize on Eucalyptus leaves and can feed on about 10% of the 600 species of Eucalyptus in Australia. These Eucalyptus leaves contain many toxins making them inedible to most animals. To combat this, koalas have evolved a very efficient liver that can break down these toxins.
Eucalyptus leaves are very low in nutritional value so koalas spend most of their time sleeping in order to conserve the little amount of energy they get from their diet. Koalas sleep for up to 21 hours of the day. 21 hours!
Magnetic Island is a fantastic place with lovely people, white sand beach and a beautiful national park. Koalas aren’t the only wildlife on the island by any stretch of the imagination with hundreds of species of fish and marine reptiles in the surrounding ocean and echidnas, tropical birds and rock wallabies on land.
Habitat fragmentation, disease (chlamydia) and climate change are devastating koala populations in the rest of Australia and are pushing the species towards extinction. But on Magnetic Island, ecotourism has really been embraced and so the koalas are treated like royalty and seem to be doing very well because of this!