ONE of the enduring images of last summer's bushfires is the woman saving a koala in her underwear.
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For me, it recalled another image from the fish-kills of the summer before: the Menindee farmer standing in the river with a big old Murray cod in his arms.
Behind the farmer, belly-up fish were floating on the algae-ridden water as far as the eye could see.
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Like the woman with the koala, he was cradling the animal as if it were a human baby.
While the fish was never named, the koala was, and it got quite a considerable name: Ellenborough Lewis.
Sadly, after desperate attempts to save him, Ellenborough Lewis was eventually dispatched to the big ecosystem in the sky.
In such pictures, individual animals step forward into our consciousness.
They're no longer part of the venue of our lives - the plants and animals in the background - but players in and of themselves. We care about Ellenborough Lewis and that nameless Murray cod.
This care can't be put back in the box. More and more of us have expanded our sense of responsibility to others who are like us in some ways - eyes, emotions, struggles - and very strange in others.
If we want to ensure the survival of iconic species such as the koala and the Murray cod, we need to take care of their habitat as well.
The Murray cod is reliant on the Murray. The koala needs its eucalypts.
This care can't be put back in the box.
Here, of course, we non-Indigenous Australians run into an existential problem. We have relied thus far on a sense of this land as boundless - the "boundless plains" are in the national anthem - and that our prosperity relies on the ability to keep the frontier going indefinitely.
Since the first axes were retrieved from the store ships of the First Fleet, land clearing has been a celebrated part of our national story.
But how does this story square with the fate of Ellenborough Lewis?
The answer: Very uncomfortably. The NSW Government's expanded koala protection legislation in the wake of the bushfires prompted a fight in the NSW Coalition that continues to unfold.
In some ways, the sudden elevation of our local member, Paul Toole, to acting leadership of the NSW Nationals can be traced back to a koala named Ellenborough. Who would have thunk it?