Kembla in the Illawarra region

Botanist Robert Brown was the first to write a detailed scientific description of the koala in 1803, based on a female specimen captured near what is now

Mount Kembla in the Illawarra region of New South Wales. Austrian botanical illustrator Ferdinand Bauer drew the animal’s skull, throat, feet,

and paws. Brown’s work remained unpublished and largely unnoticed, however, as his field books and notes remained in his possession until his death, when they were bequeathed to the British Museum (Natural History) in London. They were not

identified until 1994, while Bauer’s koala watercolours were not published until 1989.[118] British surgeon Everard Home included details of the koala based on eyewitness accounts of William Paterson, who had befriended Brown and Bauer during their stay in New South Wal

es.[119] Home, who in 1808 published his report in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society,[120] gave the animal the scientific name Didelphis coola.[121]