By: Michael Fox

Our mountain community is hurting after two Koala Mums and Joeys were hit on Mt Gravatt Outlook Drive in the last week.

The first was found early morning having been hit at night. Koala Mum, Angela, didn’t make it, she died leaving Joey Monty an orphan in care.

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A couple of days later a second Mum, Myra, was hit on the road and taken to the Koala Hospital were she was discovered to be lactating.

Click on image to watch rescue

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Alerted, my neighbours, Miranda and Scott started the search for Myra’s joey. No success. so my neighbours returned to the search at night. A glimpse of eye shine alerted Miranda and the joey was located high in a tree beside the road.

Proud rescuers … wide smiles.

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Time to call in the rescue at height experts. A real community effort. High lift fire brigade bucket trucks arrived: Luna from Roma Street and Juliette from Wishart Station.

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Yasha wrapped up safe.

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Yasha was wrapped up warm to help manage shock and taken to hospital.

The story has a happy ending … Yasha was reunited with Mum the next morning.

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Unfortunately even though the speed limit on the mountain has been reduced to 40 kph there still too many incidents with koalas being hit by speeding cars and increasing reports of dangerous hooning on the road at night.

Community members are concerned that the gate is not being closed at night. Shutting the gate at night not only dramatically reduced hooning it also had a dramatic impact on the volume of rubbish collected at Clean Up Australia:

Gate still open after 11pm

I am getting reports that the gate is not being closed at night at all which would explain the speeding cars at night and tragedies like the death of Monty’s Mum.

My understanding is that closing the gate is manged by contract staff. So does this mean we are not receiving the service Council pays for on our behalf? Local community member Vicky has committed to regularly monitoring the gate closure times.

You can help by calling the Council Call Centre on 07 3403 8888 to lodge a request for the gate to be closed at night.