Last pair! Last hurrah!
Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
A fleeting sense of
2025
Especially for
National Threatened Species Day
Sunday 7th September, 2025
Scott Alley, Melbourne
August–September, 2025
As part of The Metro Tunnel Creative Program at Town Hall Station
Two pink-nosed goodbyes rolled one into the other. The last of our Spring soft releases rolled into the last sighting of our Scott Alley inhabitants, created especially for National Threatened Species Day.
Our last two natural history illustrators, Harriet, named after Harriet Scott, and Ed, after Edward Donovan, recently headed to the soft release site now relocated several trees along. After a handful of night’s acclimatising in the soft release enclosure, and weeks, in the lead up, sampling, and impressively, encouragingly devouring the local browse we brought home for them, the last pair, we noted, was more than ready to follow in the inquisitive paws of Helena and Bug. These two, they’ll dash as soon as they can.
We opened the hatch of the soft release enclosure for Harriet and Ed to ‘fly the nest’, or rather, ‘climb the tree’, come nightfall, but, much like ourselves, such things are always best undertaken on a full belly of flowering Callistemon. After coming into care mid-April, with Helena, they have graduated to wild, once more, and are now at liberty to head to the arboreal realm.
The siblings, however, are taking their sweet ‘possum time’ and are still returning to the familiarity of the soft release enclosure, some many nights later. They’ve made themselves quite at home, as they adjust to their new surroundings, remaining gloriously unpredictable in their ‘who will dart off quickly, who will remain’ ways. One of their many loveable qualities will always be the unpredictable-predictable dance of departure.
To paw finding, green absorbtion! Travel well, Harriet and Ed. Bug and Helena, too. May your lives be long and colourful like the illustrations of your namesakes during your time with us.
Travel well, to the collaged inhabitants who resided in Scott Alley for a spell. We recently stopped to wave hello-goodbye' to ‘our’ threatened species animals, before they disappeared. Travel well, waved Louise to the Swift parrots (Lathamus discolour) and the lofty Greater glider (Petauroides volans). Travel well, Brush-tailed rock-wallaby (Petrogale penicillate), and family of Eastern barred bandicoots (Perameles gunnii) who enjoyed residing behind a rock formation of parked bikes.
Thank-you to everyone who swung by and enjoyed a crêpe with a Pookila (New Holland mouse) (Pseudomys novaehollandiae) on one of Pasadena Mansions tours through the wilds of the city. Three cheers to those who found a microbat roosting underneath the FRV Access sign.
We so enjoyed the opportunity to create a collage specifically for this location. This work was created to mark National Threatened Species Day, as part of a Metro Tunnel Creative Program commission.
A fleeting sense of came down in the early morning of Tuesday the 30th of September. A sweet roll, while she lasted.
Image credit: Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, A fleeting sense of commission for Metro Tunnel, 2025, Scott Alley, photographed by Kit Edwards. The Metro Tunnel Creative Program presents ongoing artworks and activations across its station precincts during the construction phase of the project.
