Gloriously Wild

How artists Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison opened a tiny wildlife shelter in their backyard.

Two Ringtail possums currently in Gracia and Louise’s care.

Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison are Melbourne-based artists. They collaborate to create exquisite artists’ books, zines, installations, collages and prints that address biodiversity loss and conservation. In 2023, their installation The remaking of things was a part of the Melbourne Now exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. That year they also established Tiny but Wild, a wildlife shelter at their home in North Fitzory in inner city Melbourne. The shelter allows them to care for injured Grey-headed flying foxes, Ringtail possums, Bush rats and Dusky antechinus until they are fully rehabilitated and can be slowly released back into the wild.

Sometimes nature changes us a little bit – we go for a walk and we feel better, we decide to stop using plastic straws – and sometimes, if we let it, nature can turn our entire life upside down and give it a good shake. Gracia and Louise have allowed nature to restructure their lives and their home, and in turn the animals they care for have taught them about wild lives, the perilous existence of the wild creatures in our cities and about taking action.

I was so inspired by this conversation, I hope you are too.

Can you tell me how you became wildlife carers and how it works?

Louise: We always wanted to be wildlife carers. We thought it looked amazing, but we didn’t think we could ever do it. And then COVID came along and we were walking a lot up at the Yarra Bend Colony with the flying foxes. That year, I adopted a bat for Gracia’s birthday and I was speaking to the person in Queensland doing the donation and she said, ‘Why don't you become foster carers for bats?’ She gave me the number for Bev from Bat Rescue Bayside and we called Bev up and we all immediately got along brilliantly. And then Bev said, if you get vaccinated, you can come and meet the pups.

We went over to Bev's place and she had two pups. She wanted to see how we picked them up and what our instinct was. We both picked one up. These little pups look up at you with their giant eyes and they look straight through your soul. It's immediate. The connection is so incredible. They're so intelligent. We were there for hours with Bev and we thought, over that summer, that we could go over and help out once a week.

Within a couple days though Bev and Paul called us and asked us if we would like to be foster carers? You need to be invited by somebody with a DEECA shelter license to become a foster carer. And if you want to apply for a shelter license, you need to have at least 12 months foster care experience and training.

And then you started the wildlife shelter?

Gracia: Around Christmas of last year, we officially launched Tiny but Wild, our little shelter in North Fitzroy. We could have stayed as Bev's foster carers, as we are a great little team, but she kept encouraging us. She wanted us to take the next step. And we’re so glad we did.

Louise: We work alongside Bev and Paul from Bat Rescue Bayside. They have the big flight aviary. When the bats are a bit bigger and need to start having flight time, they can go to Bev's place. And we can look after their animals when they go away, which is a big thing when you're looking after wildlife because you can't always be that mobile. In the summer, when things are busy, we're limited to two hours between feeds, so we never get far.

How many animals do you care for and for how long? 

Gracia: Flying fox pup season is in spring through to the new year. We're looking after them for that intense period and then from early-to-mid January they go to Bat Rescue Bayside where they can be in a larger creché group, socialise together and practise flying.

Louise: It used to be like clockwork. By early March, they were all heading off to the soft-release enclosure. The soft-release enclosure is a huge programme run by many dedicated folk cleaning, feeding and supervising and giving the bats time to acclimatise before the hatch is opened. By late March, they were heading into the wild and by April, everything was starting to wind down and people would have the winter to recover. But with the climate emergency, things are changing for all species. Now, we're getting pups coming in very early October, sometimes even September, and then we are getting youngsters all the way into April. We’ve only just started to slow down in May. We looked after 53 bats last summer. It was massive. And the Ringtail possums used to have a spring group and a late summer group. Now, you're getting ringtails coming into care weeks and weeks earlier.

Gracia: This year different shelters had little joeys (baby possums) coming in in July. Animals that would normally be waiting for spring are like, ‘No! It's spring now’. Patterns are changing. If it's a windy, stormy night, then you can anticipate it will be a busy morning with many rescues. Some of the rescues include flying foxes that may have become trapped on a balcony, collided with something, or clipped a powerline. Our days are flexible, because you never really know what cases might come in. There's always going to be ones that you can’t plan for. You also need to decide how much you can commit to, because this is voluntary.

Do you form close relationships with the animals? 

Louise: You get really close to them, especially a pup who you’ve raised from a week old until they're ready for creché. They come into care at different stages and for different reasons. Some will come into care at only a few days old. And some will come in at around the four- or five-week mark when they're bit too big for the mum to carry. That's when a lot come into care because they accidentally fall off. And then some come into care, we call them river bats, because their mum has not made it safely back to camp. They're coming into care at eight weeks or something like that and those ones are a bit wilder. They've already had eight weeks of wildness and they don't need you quite as much, but they're still bottle fed at that point. They've had that colony experience.

Some will be very tactile and affectionate. Some will, no matter how used to you they get, not want to be held. But they will still want to climb on the ropes and come up and snuggle you on their terms. They're all individuals. The same with the ringtails. They've all got different personalities. There'll be ones that will run up to you and be all chatty and others that are shy. Different personalities, completely individual needs.

How has being a wildlife carer changed you? 

Louise: When you first get to meet them, you're a predator and they're terrified of you. And they will be defensive. But you have to build trust with them as quickly as possible. When they’re an adult you have to be able to open their wing and check all their membrane or change a wound dressing or medicate them with antibiotics. They need to trust you enough to let you do that. Because you can't make a bat do something that they don’t want to do. If they don't want to take the meds, they won’t. You've got to work with a that. With any wildlife, you’ve got to work with them.

Gracia: And you're reading their body language or the situation as well. You get really close to them because you’re observing how they're responding. We always say, never rush a possum.

Louise: It's taught us a lot. It's certainly taught me to be a lot more present. We're both naturally very sensitive people and that helps with wildlife care because you are tapping into their personalities and sensitivities.

And it integrates you into a community of people who care about wildlife. When we release the possums each year, we work with Koala Clancy. It's a group up near the You Yangs (a mountain range west of Melbourne) where we have a soft-release programme for the possums on private property. When the possums graduate to being weaned, that’s when we start to pull back because they don't need us.

Gracia: That’s the reward. The animals that make it to the soft-release enclosure are the lucky ones. The ones who made it. It's the thing you're aiming and hope for, for all of them. We were talking to Janine who runs Koala Clancy and she had a really nice way of phrasing it: they have such proud, wild lives. The release is a beautiful return.

Louise: There are so many big, human-made dangers, but as Janine was saying, their wild life is so extraordinary. When you care for them, everything about their soul is wild. They're smart enough to know, ‘Okay. I'm in this house at the moment. I'm with these people. This is good. We can make this work.’ But as soon as they're back with their kind, they become so gloriously wild. An adult bat will be a softy, so affectionate, you put little grapes in their mouth and they love the pampering (during the recovery period). But the second they're back with the colony, you don't exist.

Can you talk about how it's changed your relationship with nature?

Gracia: It has on many levels. After this interview, we'll be going to get browse for the possums because we don't have anything for them for tonight. In that sense, when we're driving or walking, you’re always looking. It's changed our knowledge of trees. We know that possums don’t like the bluey grey eucalypt, but they do like the yellowy green ones. So you are wandering around and there’s a whole other world that has opened up. And that smell of eucalypt when they're eating the leaves, it’s really fresh. It's obviously eucalyptus, but it's a peppery smell. Or a lemon myrtle minty smell. They’re small little everyday things, but it’s indicative of how you feel about all the other big things as well. It's more detail, isn't it? Adding more detail into your world.

How are humans impacting the lives of wild animals and what we can do about it?

Louise: There are so many solutions. It's figuring out what you can do, what your skills are and then making nature a part of your life. Because it already is. It’s just realising that I guess. You can change your super (retirement fund) and your banking so that it's ethical. That's a massive change. You can get solar and do as many things as you can to tread lightly on the planet. Join local planting groups and weeding days, also cleanup days. They’re hugely important because they have an immediate impact on ecosystems and they'll also have an immediate impact on your joy in life.

The hard bit is not doing anything. If you don't participate in the solutions, it’s just all too sad. You have this feeling that you don't make a difference. And we all do, we all make a difference. Some of the biggest changes have been groups of normal people banging at that wall until it tips over. There will be a tipping point when these solutions start to become mainstream. I mean, what's the worst that could happen? We could have healthy soil, we could have fresh air, we could have fresh water. We could have joy in life. We could be reciprocal with nature and be enriched as individuals and as a society.

When a question is not a question

Why some of us find it hard to ask questions and what we can do about it

My best friend, we’ll call her Karla, asks too many questions. At least, this is what I used to think when we were younger and she’d be grilling some guy she’d just met in a bar, or worse an artist giving a talk in a gallery. Or a lecturer. Or MY senior colleague. She would ask her questions and I would be desperately searching for a way to make myself invisible. But also, while melting on the floor, I’d be in awe. 

It took a long time for me to realise that the people Karla grilled almost always liked it. The guy in the bar was flattered. The artist giving a talk in the gallery was relieved that someone was interested and engaging with their work. The senior colleague, always happy to proselytise on his favourite topic – himself! While I was slinking into the background, my friend was making connections, finding things out, demonstrating how interested she was in the world and other people. 

The power of good questions
A great question, or a question and then a series of follow-up questions that demonstrate just how actively you are listening, can have immense power. In job interviews, we come prepared with smart questions; when you coach, asking clear targeted questions of the members of your team can help shift metrics; those with leadership ambitions would do well to ask the right questions of the right people. Or closer to home, we meet another parent at the school gate, or run into a friend we haven’t seen in a long time, or need to get clear answers from a stern, time-poor doctor. Or perhaps we just want to ask better questions in the interest of being more open, engaged and connected. 

Behaviour change - bleh!
There are people like Karla, naturally curious and confident, willing to look foolish, to ask all the questions and then there are the rest of us. Those who might be curious or interested or engaged but who would nevertheless prefer to stand back, perhaps afraid of being rude or intrusive. Or there are other’s (nope, not looking at anyone!), so caught up in their own self-consciousness that they simply forget to ask questions. Some cultures prefer not to ask direct questions of leaders or those in more senior positions. Even some anglo cultures, like my family, consider too many questions prying or nosey. When something is both as fundamental to our growth and well-being and as ingrained as how we ask questions and hold conversations, how on earth do we change?  

Any kind of meaningful behaviour change begins with compassionate self-knowledge. Our culture is obsessed with behaviour change but almost always in the berating, eat that frog and get-your-shit-together sense. Maybe we all need to think about how and why we ask questions, and what this means to us? Is the objective authentic connection, or are we just trying to demonstrate some winning part of our character? 

Some questions to consider: 

How can I be better prepared with the right questions? 

What environment is conducive to me asking great questions? 

What do great questions sound like to me?

How do I feel when I am asked a good question? 

How can I give that same feeling to someone else? 

Some other approaches you might like to try:

Practice mindfulness and being in the moment
If you are feeling awkward or uncomfortable or weird? Notice it. Notice how your body feels. Name the emotion. Take a breath or use the physiological sigh.  

Preparation
If you know you are meeting with someone and would like to ask good questions, take the time to prepare. Do some research.  

Pause 
Take another breath. And another. Slow down and listen to what the other person is saying. 

Remember to ask follow-up questions
A great follow-up question begins with great listening. 

Keep your questions open-ended
Try to avoid questions that elicit a yes or no answer.  

How to keep learning

Instruction. I almost universally hate receiving it and yet I often can’t resist giving it. It’s a quintessential adulting dilemma. How do we learn what to do when we actually despise being told what to do? How do we tell people what they need to know, without telling them what to do? It’s something (being told what to do) that I will go to almost comic lengths to avoid.­­­ And yet, I want to learn. The desire to acquire new knowledge and skills is a part of my personality that I seem to have very little control over. I want to know stuff. I want to understand the world. It’s a part of my identity that I hold on to, that defines me still, even as an adult. But I don’t always want to learn what I probably should want to learn, and I almost certainly don’t want to learn what you think I should learn. You can call me rebellious or difficult but I’m probably just human. We are driven by a desire to learn new things and, just as strongly, by a desire to be autonomous.

Photo by Kush Dwivedi on Unsplash

In the world of work, we tend to think about learning in two distinct ways: as a way to turn ourselves into better, high-performing products; or as a way to turn our teams into better, high-performing products. Consequently, adult learning is often couched in mysterious terms. You’ve either got it or you don’t. Some of us are lifelong learners, some of us are not. The question often turns to ways to manipulate or trick adults into learning, how to create circumstances so effortless that adults learn by default or by accident. But adult learning is not just something you need to do to get a better job, or a promotion or to brag to your friends that you can now kind of understand spoken French. What if, as renowned American psychologist, Carl R. Rogers noted, successful adult learning is about seeing ourselves and our teams as a process rather than as a product, and more specifically, as a process of becoming? 

But what does a process of becoming mean? As adults, we have a self-concept. Each member of our team has a self-concept. We want our team members to be responsible for their decisions and for their own lives and yet we forget that they also need to be responsible for what and how they learn. As functioning adults, we resent and resist situations where we feel like others are imposing their will on us. In his seminal book, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the Brazilian adult educator Paulo Freire argues that the minute people walk into training or education contexts they tend to return to the conditioning of their school experiences, fold their arms and say something like, “teach me, then”. This creates a deep and uncomfortable conflict within us. We give up our power. In this situation, the learner is by default dependent on the teacher or facilitator and we all hate being dependent. For adult educational contexts and learning experiences to work, we need to clearly understand the link between what it is we are learning and a better future version of ourselves. It must be deeply relevant to who we are becoming as people, and how we hope to function in our life and work. As purveyors of learning, we need to make better cases for why learning matters and develop learning that really does matter.

So how do I learn without being told what to do? I take responsibility for my own learning. But how?

Below are some key ways to improve how you learn as an adult, without being told what to do:

• Participate in a knowledge community. Knowledge communities are cool things. I feel like all workplaces should cultivate them. In essence, they are another form of social media but better, with the big difference being that social media tends to lack any form of moderation or outcome orientation. A successful knowledge community knows where it’s going.

• Develop problem-solving cultures and a problem-solving mindset. Seek out thorny problems and find people who you can work with interdependently to help solve them. Learn from other people and solve the problem.

• Look for uncertainty and complexity. Seek it out. Look for unfamiliar situations, angles, perspectives, and dimensions. This builds capability and develops adaptive competencies, things such as agency, collaboration, adaptability, and flexibility.

• Use coaching to foster a culture of collaboration and curiosity. We can also use coaching principles in our private lives (but please no coaching of significant others), by cultivating meaningful relationships with different types of people, taking on constructive feedback and working on our communication skills.

• And I think perhaps the most important of all, my principle, always be guided by your own sense of curiosity and discovery. Follow your nose. Ask questions. All the questions.