The event, organised by the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) and Narrandera Koala Regeneration Centre committee, gave people a chance to see the animals in their natural habitat.

“The koalas are doing everything they’re supposed to,” NPWS ranger Angela Lewis said. “There was great attendance on the day as well, we had a five-week-old and a 92-year-old come along.”

Koalas were released into the Narrandera nature reserve in 1972 to re-establish a colony that had disappeared around 1900 and they had since spread down both sides of the Murrumbidgee River.

Now that the colony is thriving, the annual count is more about education than science, Ms Lewis said.

“There’s no way we could cover all the ground… we see if we can see the koalas in the trees but there’s probably more of them watching us,” she said. “In the past we used the count to see how the population is going but they’ve been happily doing what they do for many years now so it’s a fun day out… a general check to see if they look healthy, that sort of thing.”