Cute koala makes surprise visit to regional IGA store

Staff at an IGA supermarket in regional Victoria got quite the surprise when a friendly little koala decided to pay them a visit last week.

The store is in Meeniyan, just off the south Gippsland Highway and locals are used to a small colony of the marsupials populating the town centre.

But one of them got a little adventurous and decided to cross the road and head on over to do a spot of grocery shopping.

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"He has a little roosting area over in the trees in the middle part of town and he decided to go for a little waddle and ended up at our door and was very determined to come in, we had great difficulty getting him back out," store owner, Kaelene Shervall, told Today.

Once inside the store, staff captured video of the koala heading up the aisles until it found the herbs and spices stand and decided to climb it.

But the herb stand mustn't have been comfortable so the koala went exploring some more, checking out the newspaper stand and some fluffy kids' hats too.

"The main thing was he was just looking to climb up somewhere and when he couldn't get any higher on the herb stand, that's when I got the platform ladder out and he decided he liked that better," she said.

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Kaelene said while the koala didn't cause any damage in-store, she was a bit stressed about it crossing roads to get there, so staff gently wheeled it back out to a safe spot using the ladder.

"We were trying to get him over to safety away from the traffic, he hasn't been back in the store, but I'm hoping he won't come back," she said.

Check out the carefree koala's in-store antics in the video above