Sitting down for a cappuccino at a cafe on the weekend, an Australian woman was ready to relax after a busy week and take a few photos of the surrounding bushland. Instead of her regular breakfast burger, Sharyn Bartlem thought she'd order the shakshuka, a Middle Eastern dish of spicy tomato and eggs.
But that wasn't the only thing that was a little different last Saturday. Looking through the lens of her camera, she saw a butcherbird drinking from a fountain. Then she noticed something was hiding in a nearby gum tree, staring back at her.
"I felt a shadow out of the corner of my eye. I still had my camera lens up as I turned around," Sharyn told Yahoo News.
"I literally thought I must have been imagining it, because I saw a koala coming down the tree."
What shocked Sharyn is that the koala was in a tree at the edge of a busy roundabout, in Whites Hill Reserve near Brisbane.
She's an advocate for the protection of wildlife in the area, through the group Save the Koalas and Wallabies of Whites Hill. At least 113 koalas were killed within 6km of Whites Hill in 2024, despite the species being listed as endangered in Queensland so it would receive better protection.
So when she spotted the koala, her instinct was to snap a photo and run. "There were cars coming. It looked like he was perched there, wondering what to do next," she said.
"I didn't think he was going to run straight out. But the cars were only one metre away, and no one seemed to see him, they were just racing by."
The situation was a reminder of how easily koalas in the environment can be missed by motorists. Because even as a koala advocate, Sharyn originally had no idea there was one sitting so close to her.
"Koalas will jump a metre onto the ground. And this means every time you drive past a tree that's a metre away from the road, there could be a koala on the back of it ready to jump out," she said.
"It's a difficult message to say, drive like a koala is there, because they're not there all the time. But that's how they get hit."
The koala she spotted on Whites Hill Reserve was monitored by volunteers from Koala Rescue Brisbane South to ensure it wasn't hit, and that it climbed into higher branches. But concerns remain for the wildlife that lives nearby, and Sharyn is urging motorists to please slow down.