On Tuesday 28th April, committee members of the Possum Centre went on a ringtail possum spotting walk. Our venue was the walk trail alongside the beach and the hospital in West Busselton. It was a beautiful evening and we all enjoyed watching the sun go down over Geographe Bay before the formality of the evening commenced.

As we all know, possums are nocturnal and so they can normally only be seen after dusk. They feed up in the peppermint trees that grow in abundance along this coastal strip. Possums rarely come down near the ground so it can be hard to spot them high in the branches.

We were professionally equipped with headlamps that reflect back the red from the possum’s eyes to help in finding them. These twelve headlamps were purchased recently by the Possum Centre thanks to a grant from the Volunteer Grants Program.
Uta and Helmut gave us an explanation of the use of the

headlamps and carried out an impromptu training session on how to use them - then we all started looking. The younger eyes were more quickly able to find those red reflections that identified the position of our ‘targets’. Once a possum was spotted we were all able to focus on the location and were delighted at what we saw. There were single possums, pairs (we think probably mother and offspring) and some groups of three (mother and two offspring?). One particular possum seemed to be very keen to be photographed and came down the tree in a curious manner to inspect us.

Apart from being an interesting activity, possum spotting is a necessary scientific method of determining the prevalence of possums in a particular area, especially if development and clearing are being considered. We were not conducting a formal survey nevertheless we were delighted to be able to count 17 possums in the 200 metre stretch of peppermints alongside the footpath between the hospital and the beach.

Busselton Dunsborough Times 10. July 2009

The West Australian 13. July 2009

Busselton Dunsborough Times Oct. 2009