The warm and weather-proof possum skin cloaks were also recognised and appreciated by European settlers in the outback, where they became a highly regarded personal item. Alexander Harris describes one as follows from his personal knowledge in the early 1830s: ... the opossum a large species trapped by the wandering shepherd for amusement, as he follows his flock along by the woodside, furnish the material for a blanket cloak, to use the phrase of the country of the most luxurious, furry softness. Sixty-three x 7 of these skins are the stated complement for one blanket or cloak; when made it is large enough doubled to envelope a tall man completely beyond head and feet. As a bed and blanket in one, there is, I suppose, nothing on earth that surpasses it, whilst as a protection against a day's rain it is as efficacious as a roof of a house.