Why Koalas are my family?

“I’ve been working in this Koala hospital for 4 years now, they are my family. I was born in 1949, I was put in an orphanage when I was 2. My father was an alcoholic because ireland was a poor country at that time. Men drank too much, and my mum was not able to take care of me, as she had 15 child and 8 survived. Orphanage was the only solution at that time. My mum died at 38 when I was 11. Since I was released at the age of 17, I had no chance to see my mum even I wished to. Anyways, I know I have many pearls inside me. Yet i grew up happy, there are good people around me and they made me who i am. I worked many jobs, as a printer in a printing factory, in a hotel, a tour guide, in the farm with cattles…. Later I retired and wanted to do something. And that’s why I’m here. I came from Ireland and went to australia in 1975 with my sister. We save koala because they are endangered. Since the Europeans came, 95% of the koala habitat were gone forever and they killed millions of koala for their fur, thinking that would made them a fortune in Europe. Besides that, they also brought along other animals, like foxes and rabbits from europe, in order to satisfy their selfish hunting desire. They had no idea that this greatly destroyed the Eco-system in Australia and now Australia has suffered almost the highest lost of native animals than any other part of the world. Now only the eastern coast has wild koala around the whole world.

I had many memorable days here. One time we found a blind koala, he was rubbing his nose on an alpaca, thinking it was a female one. we named him Romeo. Later we rescued another girl koala and named her Juliet. Now we put them together. And one time a mum saved an orphan koala from a dog and sent it to us, we wanted to name it after the boy of this mum, so we named him Dominic. That’s what we want, to have people interested and engaged.

My sisters and brother are here as well as volunteers for more than 10 years. The experience I have learnt from traveling around the world, is to treat people with dignity, no matter where they come from, and to treasure whatever you have.”

WE ARE SUPERHEROES Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wearesuperheroes/we-are-superheroes