Truth of Koala “Sam” Picture Revealed
UPDATE: I think this view sums up the Koala “Sam” incident perfectly:
She is referring to sceptics (journos?) like Prue Vincent who clarified in The Smage that the video was “actually taken in the week leading up to the deadliest bushfires in Australian history, during preventative backburning operations”.
No-one’s claiming Sam wasn’t in a bushfire-affected area, just that it wasn’t one associated with Black Saturday, which is the conclusion an onlooker would draw from most of the reporting on the Koala quench.
McNaught herself wrote about Sam on 11 February: “Sam became the most famous koala in the world when firefighter David Tree stopped to give him a drink amid the devastation of the Victoria fires.”
In fact, the photo was taken on 1 February, six days before the Victoria-wide fires broke out (the fires most people would associate with the term “Victoria fires”). It doesn’t make the Koala any less cute or any less thirsty. And who’s to say that symbolism can’t sometimes transcend accuracy when it serves a higher cause, like highlighting the plight of animals caught in bushfires.
But it is a reminder that even in times of tragedy we should continue to question the story behind the story. [Crikey]
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ORIGINAL: I like many people found the picture of a firefighter giving water to a koala in the middle of a bushfire to be just incredible; well it turns out it was too incredible:
It’s been revealed that video footage of a Victorian firefighter giving water to an injured and dehydrated koala was not quite what it seemed.
“Koala Man” Dave Tree made news across the globe with footage of a koala drinking from a bottle. The footage, shot on a mobile phone became a sensation on the website YouTube.com.
However the appealing scene was actually taken in the week leading up to the fires, during preventative backburning operations.
Dave says there was no intention to deceive. He took the video to show his daughter.
The koala “Sam” has come to symbolis the plight of native animals left homeless after the massive fires burnt thousands of hectares of bush. [TV NZ]
Here is the original YouTube of the encounter with the koala:
I still find it to be just incredible footage even if it happened a few days before the big bushfires.
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About The Author
Dobbs
I am a avid hiker with a love for travel and the outdoors. I currently call the Evergreen State of Washington my home.
The footage is from a back burn that was going on before the big bushfires.
At just about any given time in Australia during the summer there is a bushfire going on. When people talk about the big bushfires they say 7FEB because that is when the big fires began due to the arsonists and wind conditions that day. Notice that is why I said "big bushfires" in my posting because 7FEB is when they really did get big.
Why do everybody claim that the fires started on Saturday 7 February ❓
THEY DIDN'T.
Friend of mine's parents were the first victims of the fires and they lost their house on Saturday 31 January 🙁
Sooo, even though the date of the footage is earlier than the fires that claimed the first lives, the footage is CERTAINLY from the Victorian Bushfies.
who cares when the photographs/videos were taken; these little guys and all the others like them need our help all the time! Timing doesn't increase or decrease this fact one jot. Nor is an animal being injured in one fire more or less important than another. As the photographs attest.
AND? it is still showing the plight of animals in the wild after a fire TRUE?
This koala may not have been from the big bushfire but the image was able to raise awareness about the impact the fires had on Australian wildlife. The latest I have read is that authorities expect of 1 million animals to have been killed in this fire.
A little late for a comment..but..I wish to clarify something about the claims of the so called 'misleading' story on Sam the Koala and David Tree. Firstly, the Mirboo North fire, where David met Sam for the first time, which occured a week before the deadly large fires, destroyed 30 homes and burnt out over 6,000 hectares of forest and farmland. No human lives were lost, this we can thank the fire firefighters for. The fire was claimed to have been deliberately lit, as the fire ignited from two seperate points alongside the main Mirboo North to Morwell highway. The… Read more »
Ramair, thanks for the clarification and as I said before I have no problem with the image because it was able to raise awareness about the impact the fires had on Australian wildlife.
Just a further clarification, not 30 but 34 houses were burnt in that fire and, as Ramair said, there is no such thing as "routine Backburning".
Why would a fire authority be irresponsible enough to light any kind of fire on day of TOTAL FIREBAN?
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