29 Dec 2008 FILM DIARY

When I woke up on 29 December, I drew back my bedroom curtain, opened the sliding door onto the balcony and went back to bed to listen to the 7.45 news, as is my wont. As I lay there I saw what looked like a huge tangle of spider web caught in the morning sunlight beneath the seat of a garden chair. Then I saw it was green and wondered how vegetation had somehow been blown behind the chair. When I got up and took a closer look, the sphere of bits of branch from the tree outside my balcony, looked vaguely familiar. I had filmed a similar but larger structure before, in a tree, but devoid of any greenery. Still uncertain, I prodded the sphere and met with resistance. This was indeed a ring-tailed possum’s dray. Unfortunately, some of the vegetation fell off. This enabled me later to film a bit of tail, which poked through the resultant hole. The next day the dray was somewhat dishevelled, due to the possum’s going and coming, and I was able to film other bits of possum. A neighbour to whom I showed the dray pointed out that there were actually two possums sleeping in it, so I filmed bits of both. The possums did not return the next day or the day after, so I removed the dray.