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Your support makes all the difference.'Make sure they don't bite you,“ said my wife as I left the apartment to catch the ferry from Circular Quay to Manly Wharf on the eastern extreme of Sydney Harbour. Manly is where surfers come to chase waves and where, on the curve of Shelly Beach, a straggle of hippies, banging drums and marking sunset, was chasing transcendence.
I was here on a simpler mission: the pursuit of Australian indigenous species. Every animal on my wishlist could be seen in captivity at Taronga Zoo, just across from the Opera House, but the point was to see them in their own world. And underpinning my excitement was the chance that they might not show up.
Jess Relton, who by day is a ranger with Sydney Harbour National Park, and by night the owner of After Dark Nature Tours, was my hedge against likely failure. He was waiting under cabbage palms near the tide-line for a group of us to assemble.
What were the chances of seeing anything? “No worries,” said Jess. “My daughter's up in the bush. She has them in cages. I'll send her a signal to let them go.” Most of us laughed.
Squinting at the sky, now turning grey as the trees behind us merged into near darkness, he handed the six of us wraparound headsets (“your eyes and ears”) through which he could talk to us sotto voce. Next, a pencil torch and, lastly, night-vision binoculars. Through their lenses the world of blackness, closing in on us, was pale green: tree trunks, bushes, clumps of grass, all sharply visible.
“You'll use them only when we stop and there's something to spot,” he said, explaining that at other times “you'll need your arms and hands to work the torch and help you balance.”
Moving deeper into the trees until the darkness was total, we made a careful zig-zagging ascent in single file, sometimes stumbling over tree roots or catching a toe on the edge of a boulder, the pallid pencil light vaguely showing a beaten track. We might have been anywhere, yet we were less than a mile from the nightlife of Manly and less than six miles from the heart of one of the world's great cities. The bush was completely, formidably present, our senses straining for signs of life.
We each followed the heels of the person in front. Without warning, Jess's whisper in our ears sliced through the silence. “To the right, in a highish branch,” he indicated. I swung my binoculars, my gaze panning over the treescape. The glow of eyes was what gave it away. “A brushtail possum, young, and nervous.” The possum – rabbit-sized, its ears pricked, with stubby nose and lank, dangling, almost foxy tail – stared back uncertainly through the green underwatery light.
Then, someone stumbled. We marked time. “Just ahead,” rasped Jess, “I'm catching the whiff of bandicoot – a male, I think – pretty close.” And then I saw it – low, twitching suspiciously, not much bigger than a rat in a swatch of thick grass. At first it paused, then darted from view in search of insects. Someone below me spotted a snake that turned out instead to be a tree branch. We shuffled away, leaving the bandicoot in peace, and found another brushtail possum, this time clinging up a gum tree nosing for insects.
Time dissolved with remarkable swiftness. In milky torchlight my watch showed an hour had passed. After that, our first ringtail possum was found in a bottlebrush tree, clinging high against the starry sky, at ease in the forest canopy, its curling prehensile tail tip (hence its name) wrapped round a branch. Under the boughs, the leaves and twigs were alive with tree ants, grubs and spiders; I almost stumbled into a web spun low between branches, catching its glisten in the torch light.
Jess stopped and turned. “Careful – beware the one-way bungee jump,” he joked. We'd reached the cliffs. Then, he pointed suddenly into the canopy of leaves. A flying fox. We focused our night-sights on what resembled an empty duffel bag draped from a branch. “She's a beautiful bat when you see her fly,” Jess said.
In a cave facing the ocean, a risen moon made our faces visible. Jess served us wattleseed scones and bush tea, and showed us a handprint on the rock: “Possibly made by the Kay-ye-my-Gal Aboriginals. Possibly not.” The moonlit ocean rippled eerily towards the horizon; behind us the bush seethed with life.
We started downhill. At the bottom, beside the car park, the hippies were long gone, but now there were three brushtail possums and a darting bandicoot in the lamplight. Some of us gasped, and it was we who were seeking cover. “Our turn to play possum,” someone whispered.
Getting there
The writer flew to Sydney with Emirates (0844 800 2777; emirates.com) which operates from Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Newcastle and Birmingham via Dubai.
Staying there
Harbourside Apartments (0061 2 9963 4300; harboursideapartments.com.au) start at £130 per night.
Visiting there
After Dark Nature Tours (0061 457 002211; afterdarknaturetours.com.au). The 2.5-hour Night Wonders tour costs A$69pp (£33).
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