Hello Koala Lovers,

It is getting closer to Christmas and César, our Finance Manager and I went to a beautiful country city about an hour west of Brisbane last week to buy up big at a Bush Christmas Exhibition. It is an annual celebration of outback creative talent which presents a magnificent collection of handmade gifts and gourmet delights each year. Exhibitors are principally from the bush and because Koalas live in the bush, we are delighted to support them. Cesar and I had too much fun for a working day!

I must confess that we bought a lot and over the coming months you will see some of the beautiful things we bought to raffle so you can support the Koala and the creative people who live in the bush.

It was marvellous to meet so many incredible people working together and many of them gave me stories about what is happening in their local areas. And always, always stories of Koalas – and like us, they are concerned about their future.

I did buy these; and they are hard to part with, because I love them. I am a knitter, so I know how much work has gone into them. We are going to raffle them for Australians only because we would not be able to get them posted overseas in time, but we will ensure we will find gems like these earlier next year. These are hand-made and only $10.00 per ticket.

I will write to you again before our team goes on holidays with more news of the AKF, but in short, we have had a marvellous, but a long year and us Australians love a good summer holiday. Of course, we face a federal election soon, probably in February and just recently we saw that new potential environmental laws were scuttled by politics and as always, my mantra; we need a Koala Protection Act.

I will write again soon.

Deborah