From The fur traders and fur bearing animals (1914) by Marcus Petersen:
While not as important commercially as the Common Phalanger, the skins of the Koala are used extensively in the manufacture of sleeping bags, coats and other articles where a durable, reasonable priced fur is desired. The scientific designation of this animal signifies Ashy Pouched Bear, which is a very good description of it. The Koala is strictly arboreal, the natives often being obliged to follow it to the top of the highest trees sixty and seventy feet above the ground.
The Koala is the largest Australian mammal living in the trees and that is probably the reason why it is called the bear by the natives, as it is unlike that animal in its nocturnal habits as well as its slow movements, in both of which characteristics it resembles the sloth.
It is from eighteen to twenty-four inches long, and the general color is a light grey, the tips of the coarse hair being white. The upper part of the belly and chest and the insides of the legs are white, and the lower part of the belly is reddish brown, at times approaching to a dark purple hue. The fur on the hind quarters is much shorter than on the rest of the body, and has patches and spots of white. The ears are very short, tufted on the inside with long white hairs. The head, which is broad and short, is surrounded with a fringe of hair. The nose is bare, and whiskers are absent. The formation of the feet is singular, the claws of the fore-paws being five in number, the two inner ones opposable to the toes like the thumb of a man to the fingers of the hand. The next two toes are small and joined together, and the fourth, which is the longest, is separate, as is also the fifth which however is somewhat shorter (pg. 263-264).
The fur trade just about did the koala in in the early twentieth century.
It was one of the first marsupials in Australia to be protected, and it currently has healthy numbers, although it is rare or extinct in some parts of its former range
