Airdate: Possum Wars

This Sunday ABC1 screens the doco Possum Wars, written and directed by Bruce Permezel (Choir of Hard Knocks, Bodyline: The Ultimate Test) with cinematography by the acclaimed David Parer (The Dragons of Galapagos, Penguin Island).

Filmed over a year, this looks at the private world of ‘Australia’s most unwanted marsupials’ and their battle to survive in the big city.

Every night around Australia, thousands of native possums scamper across city rooftops in an endless quest for food and shelter. Forced out of their bush habitats by clearing and development, these mischievous marsupials swarm into cities where their raucous noise and destructive appetites bring them few friends.

“Possums are very polarising”, says producer Sally Ingleton. “Some people are very fond of them and enjoy having wildlife in their garden but many others see them as a pest and nuisance and want to get rid of them”

In Possum Wars, we meet Mumsy, the 14-year-old matriarch of Melbourne’s Curtain Square, a leafy park in Melbourne’s inner suburb of Carlton North. For years the elms have been refuge to her and her growing brood in a predatory world of cats and dogs, cars, people and power lines. But her urban life is about to become tougher. Residents argue the 60 possum inhabitants of Curtain Square are in plague proportions and their voracious appetites are killing the parks historic trees. Culling or relocating them is illegal so the local council has engaged scientists to implant them with contraceptives.

It’s a controversial decision that’s dividing the community and infuriating wildlife carers who will do anything to save them. One of the key activists featured in Possum Wars is Rheya Linden, a pro-possum campaigner for over 20 years who founded Animal Active. Linden has been coming to Curtain Square for 13 years to feed the possums, as she believes there’s not enough natural food around to sustain them. Meanwhile Kath Handasyde, senior lecturer in zoology at Melbourne University provides credible scientific information about possum biology and explains why these marsupials have adapted so well to city life.

In the documentary, we also meet Paul The Possum Catcher – for whom business is booming – Jodie and Chris the possum carers and the local council for whom wildlife management is an ever growing issue.

ABC1, Sunday 15 December at 7.30pm.