By Gabriella Vukman
Winding its way throughout the nation, a new film raising awareness and invoking a new perspective on koala conservation is coming to screens in Healesville and Warburton.
‘The Koalas’ film delves into the plight of the fluffy marsupial totem that is now listed as endangered in Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory.
Having previously screened at Cameo in Belgrave and coming to Healesville’s The Memo and the Warburton Arts Centre, filmmakers, creators and producers of ‘the Koalas’ Gregory Miller and Georgia Wallace-Crabbe are encouraging locals to hold their own screenings.
“We have made the film for a general audience, it’s G rated so you can bring the kids to watch it too,” Gregory said.
“The film doesn’t have horrible graphic details in it, we’ve kept it ‘kids friendly’ to tell the story without having to show graphic images even though those images are out there.”
“We want to reach to as many audience as possible, our strategy was to make it accessible to everyone – the feedback we are getting is that people finding it very emotional I believe that is because they genuinely care about the animals.”
Gregory and Georgia set out to encourage and inspire their audience to take action.
“We want people to come away with a sense that it is not a lost cause, that we can turn this around – it is a film that is purposeful and not negative,” George said.
With the Hills and the Yarra Valley’s status as a peri-urban area, the loss of habitat and support for animal aid are two major contentions that underpin the entire film.
“The issue in areas like the Yarra Valley and Ranges is that there is expansion going on, houses are being built, roads are being constructed – every time that happens we lose trees and when that happens in an area that is rich with animal life – they suffer and that’s what we are seeing in Victoria and everywhere around the big cities of Australia,” Gregory said.
“One of the key problems Koalas are facing is they are interfaced with humans around the edges of the cities, we need to really change the way we allow development to take place and there needs to be a new approach to design.”
‘The Koalas’ Co Filmmaker Georgia said the history of the translocation of koalas in Victoria has made it a very unclear story.
“Koalas have been lost right across the landscape in Victoria in all the areas that have been cleared for farming and in some places like Gippsland where the iconic Straseci koala has hung on because of paddock trees and a mixture of pockets of bushland amongst farmland – the conversion of those areas to forestry has significantly impacted the remaining habitat for koalas,” Georgia said.
“Both in the Upper Yarra and in Gippsland, koalas have hung on in habitats that are now being encroached on either for farming or forestry so the net loss is always less trees and therefore, less habitat – it’s not just for koalas, it’s also for greater gliders and other species.”
“Sometimes Victorians don’t have a sense of where they were in the landscape because it was cleared a hundred years ago.”
Each screening will be accompanied by a discussion with a panel of local experts who will speak on the issues pertaining to Koalas in the local area of the screening.
With extensive native timber logging and development, resulting in the increasing loss of koala habitat, ‘The Koalas’ film promotes the rallying of locals together in order to prevent the 2025 extinction of the koala species.
“It’s very important on local government level that the moratorium really be placed on the clearing of any remnant bush, you’ve got a lot of fantastic, amazing forest, but it’s chipping away at the edges and in forests that are on private land – all of this is just eliminating the last remaining bits of habitat that these animals can live in,” Georgia said.
“Maybe the trees are protected in the state forests but they are still being chipped away, local councils really need to put the animals first in their thinking rather than taking out the last remnant stands of trees like has been happening all over the place.”
‘We need to put pressure on local councils.”
For more information about the film visit thekoalasfilm.com. For tickets to the screenings at The Memo (Tuesday 27 August at 7pm) and the Warburton Arts Centre (Tuesday 3 September at 7pm), visit yarraranges.vic.gov.au/Experience/Events/The-Koalas.
