Koalas- where have they gone?

I was taking an afternoon walk along Eastslopes Way last January when a couple of young women asked whether I had seen any koalas. They were hoping for a koala sighting on their walk. It is hard to spot a koala in a treetop even when you know it is there, and the young women did not seem to realise that their chances of just randomly spotting a koala were slim.

When we first bought our block at North Arm Cove, we wanted to encourage the wildlife. We bought gum trees recommended by the Forestry Commission as suitable for koalas. One survived and it is now nearly as tall as some of the mature ironbarks. However, I suspect that there are few koalas around to eat the leaves of our special gum.

The first time I saw a koala at North Arm Cove was when an elderly lady from across the road came racing down to tell us that we had a koala on our block. It was on the ground, but scrambled about 3m up a nearby pine and then stopped and watched us watching it. That was in 1989. We saw several in the next few years, mostly high up in the gums after hearing their distinctive grunting during the night. However, I have not seen any since the mid 1990's.

My neighbours report that they saw koalas up to about 2002, mostly on our property. They also found a dead koala in about 2002, which they buried. They have not seen any for the last 10 years.

I have attached a photograph of a koala taken in October 1994 on our property. This one was perched about 5m up  a tree close to the waterfront. Has anyone got more recent evidence of koala activity in the Cove?