I snort.
‘What?’
‘Sorry, it’s not that funny. It’s just that Cindy is my mother’s name,’ I explain.
‘Oh!’ Recognition lights up his face. ‘Are you . . .?’
‘Lily Neverley. I’m with Michael.’
‘Ah, right, gotcha! Welcome to Australia.’
‘Thanks. And before you ask, it was long.’
‘Long? Oh, the flight.’ He grins. ‘Been asked that a lot today, have you?’
‘By everyone in the staffroom earlier.’
‘Well, I’m Ben.’
I reach out and shake his proffered hand. He’s probably in his late twenties, early thirties. He has short sandy hair and is tall, lean and as tanned as you’d expect from an Australian who works outside in the sun every day. Just as with Michael, I like him immediately.
I nod at the koala. ‘And this is Cindy?’
‘Yep. You can pat her on her back if you like.’
‘She’s really soft,’ I murmur. ‘Hello,’ I say to the koala. ‘Are you enjoying those nice green leaves?’ I turn to Ben. ‘I met a kangaroo earlier. He was disappointed I didn’t bring him any food.’
‘They like the pellets you can buy at the entrance.’
‘Thanks for the tip. I might get some later. I’ll be steering clear of those emus though. I didn’t trust the way they looked, with their beady little eyes.’
He laughs and I remember the queue of people waiting, and say, ‘I’d better move on.’
‘You’re alright, our replacements are here.’
The woman I recognise as Janine the Map Bearer comes through the gates on the other side of the small enclosure. She’s carrying another koala.
‘Hello, there,’ Janine says to me and I step aside as Ben lifts Cindy off her perch. ‘How’s the jetlag?’
‘Not bad, thanks.’ I remember hearing the word ‘jetlag’ from my dad when he went to America once.
‘Do you want to come with me to put Cindy back?’ Ben asks me, positioning the koala over his shoulder like a baby.
‘Um,’ I reply hesitantly. I don’t want to get in his way, but I still have some time to kill before Tasmanian Devil feeding time at eleven. ‘Yes please, if that’s okay?’
‘Of course it is.’
I follow him out of the gates as Cindy looks back at me, languidly chewing on a leaf.
‘How many koalas do you have?’ I ask.
‘About fifty,’ he calls back to me. ‘The ones who get photographed with the tourists are only allowed twenty minutes per day of handling so we need a fair few, especially if one or more of them are under the weather.’
He walks to the nearest of two koala houses, or ‘lofts’ as I later discover they’re called. Several koalas can be seen snuggled into the branches of a gum tree. Ben climbs over the wall and gently places Cindy on a branch where she carefully ascends into the darkness of the loft’s wooden eaves. There’s a sign that saysShhh. . .Please be quiet. Koalas have very sensitive hearing, so when Ben’s walkie-talkie starts to crackle, he leaps over the wall and hurries away, indicating that I should follow him.
‘Yep?’ he says.
‘Ben, it’s Michael,’ I hear over the buzzing noise of the walkie-talkie. ‘Got a problem with one of the wombats. Can you do the devil talk?’
