Looking back from this point in time, six years later, it seems so easy. At the time, though, it seemed so hard. My every waking moment (with two-hourly feeds around the clock there were hundreds, perhaps even thousands of waking moments), my first thought was always Bailey.

I could just record his ‘milestones’ but that would only tell half the story, so I’ll start at the beginning.

The first contact I had with Bailey was actually through his mum, who had been hit by a car at Toowoomba on June 21, 1997. I volunteered to transport her to Moggill Koala Hospital on June 23 and there it was discovered that she carried a tiny baby in her pouch. Mum hung on for a week, but finally reached that stage and was kindly euthanased.

Maybe I was lucky, but I happened to be there at the time. It was felt that he was too small to hand-raise but as far as I was concerned (being fairly new to raising orphans and not knowing any better) he was alive so therefore had to be given a chance. Even after being informed of the odds (about 90% against success) I still wanted to try.

On June 30 he became mine. He weighed 56 grams and was not much bigger than my thumb. He had no fur, his eyes were still sealed shut, his ears were still flattened to his head and I thought he was gorgeous. I immediately named him Bailey and gave him his first bottle (1ml of Divetelact) which he downed in a few seconds flat.

His mum was an Esky, her pouch was a large sock and her body heat was supplied by a hot water bottle. I had no temperature gauge (not that one would have helped as I had no idea what temperature to keep him at anyway), so I relied on my lips to judge how warm he was.

Over the next three weeks, Bailey gained weight steadily, with me increasing his milk intake by 0.1ml per feed each week.

Then we had our first real hiccup. On July 25 I nearly cooked him! It took 20 hours for him to recover. (I was going to include the entries from his diary, but even re-reading it after six years brings back the feelings of horror and desperation I felt at the time).

Of course there were other hiccups along the way, like teething and papping etc but all comparatively minor.

He just kept on surviving; in spite of the many feeds he missed because the alarm clock failed to wake me. (After a few weeks of two-hourly feeds I was a zombie, so ended up using two alarm clocks – the first one to wake me enough to hear the second one.

To make a long story short (or to make a saga into a short story), here are Bailey's milestones:

• July 10: his ears were standing up (weight 76g).
• July 16: his eyes began to open, just tiny little slits (weight 94g).
• July 21: his eyes were fully open (weight 100g).
• Mid-August: he had started growing fur (weight 144g).
• September 1: he had his first pap (weight 190g).
• September 4: he started eating leaf.

By January 1998, Bailey was in a tree in his own room (weight 660g). He began the weaning process at 1.8kg and was fully weaned by 2.3kg.

Bailey went into kindy on August 31, 1998, weighing 2.6kg and approximately 16 months old. He failed  kindy and was sent back home to ‘grow up’ (no, he was not a sookie mummy’s boy!).

He passed his second attempt at kindy and was released into Crow’s Nest National Park on January 13, 1999.

He then managed to fail his first two attempts at life in the wild (no, he was not a sookie mummy’s boy!).

He was finally released successfully and hasn’t been seen or heard of since. As with all hand-raised orphans released back into the wild, we have to assume that no news is good news.

Good luck Bailey, you fought really hard for your life – may it be a long one.

So, what was the secret of his survival? I wish I knew. Maybe he was just meant to live. Definitely more a case of good luck than good management.

For more photographs of Bailey, see our Image Gallery