Logger Brett Robin scoops up burnt koala ‘Coota’ amid work to reopen roads
“Coota” the koala found Brett Robin as she padded out of the burnt bush on scorched paws. The fifth-generation logger had been shipped into isolated Mallacoota, as hundreds of others fled.
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“Coota” the koala found Brett Robin as she padded out of the burnt bush on scorched paws.
The fifth-generation logging contractor was having a water break on a “bloody hot day” a week after fire razed Mallacoota.
He thinks it was the noise of crews felling charred trees that told the “little bugger” help wasn’t too far away.
Called Coota – “a nickname that stuck” – she appeared with singed ears and a burnt nose, later dabbed with ointment at a local wildlife shelter.
“I just picked her up like a baby,” Mr Robin said.
“She wasn’t cranky at all, I think she was happy to see us.”
Mr Robin was sent to Mallacoota on-board the HMAS Choules – the navy ship that evacuated more than 1000 civilians from the burnt-out beach town.
His job is to fell dangerous trees and clear the debris that has blocked roads and isolated communities.
He had got the call up, as forestry workers often did during fires or “shit situations like this”, he said.
It came days after his own property in Buchan, a holiday home he lived in about five months a year, burnt.
“She’s flat,” Mr Robin said of the house.
“The whole joint is burnt but we are one of many.”
Immediately after the fires raced through, Mr Robin and his family organised convoys of hay and feed for Buchan’s farmers.
He posted a Facebook call-out for donations expecting a semi-load or two but ended up with 400 round bales from Kinglake and more from towns across the Yarra Valley and Gippsland.
Asked how he could help others after losing his own house, Mr Robin said: “What else do you do?
“You’ve just sort of got to keep going. There is no point sitting around pissing and moaning about it, you’ve just got to move forward.”
Mr Robin initially spoke to the Herald Sun from a roadside out of Mallacoota, where his loader had suffered a flat tyre.
He had been at the top of Maramingo Hill, about 23km out of Genoa, and said wherever he looked the land was blackened.
“In every direction, the joint is burnt and still smouldering – there is still bloody puffs of smoke,” he said.
“It is so burnt that bugger all would have survived.
“There are miles and miles and miles of trees with no leaves on them.”
The logger had a small reprieve from the recovery efforts on Thursday, when he spent the day with his wife Elisa and kids, Makala 10, and Jake, 6.
Buggered if he knew when he had seen them last, maybe two or three weeks earlier.
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After only a day, he headed back to East Gippsland’s far east to keep clearing roads to towns.
“It’s a bloody good feeling when you do get in there,” Mr Robin said.
“People are so appreciative to see loggers turn up with their big machinery.”