Show me an Australian who claims to hate Kangaroos and I’ll show you a liar.
I was asked one of the perennial dumb questions about Kangaroos the other day “Do people really ride them?” I’m sure it was a joke question (I answered “Yes”), but the life of an Aussie ex-pat in America can be described as an endless amount of people asking questions about Kangaroos.
Q: “Are they everywhere?”
A: “Yes; you have to push them out of the way when you go outside to check the mailbox.”
Q: “Do people have them as pets?”
A: “Well, one person I knew did” (<- true story, see below)
Q: “Do people really eat them?
A: “Yep, and their jerky taste like fish!” (<- personal experience)
Etcetera, etcetera.
It is quite possible that my first ever encounter with a kangaroo was captured on film, and is show at the top of this post and here:
I’m not exactly sure where this image was taken (Gosford Reptile Park? Somewhere in Barrington Tops?) but as you can see the kangaroo itself is freakishly large – almost as tall as I am. Man-sized (see top pic) roos are rare indeed, and it is perhaps lucky I escaped with my life.
During my childhood years we often visited small family run nature parks and zoos, almost all of which would have a clutch of friendly kangaroos eager to eat whatever breakfast cereal (usually honey smacks) were offered up in the vending machines for $0.10 or $0.05 a go. I always liked the roos, and liked to think they liked me.
At some point, as these things tend to do, it became crass to house the roos. Domesticizing them and offering them up as feeding toys became uncommon. At some point during my teenage years Taronga Zoo switched from a roo enclosure in which you could walk right up and pat the roos (or wallabies) to one in which – while still free roaming – they urge visitors to not touch the beasts. And no machines offer up cereal for handy feeding opportunities.
Blackbutt Reserve had adopted this vision of roo-displaying years prior, and it’s roos were always behind bars in a rather large enclosure (frustratingly so from the point of view of a short child who couldn’t see them when they were behind a tree or in the opposite corner). I recall one of the other wallaby enclosures – built into the side of an incline so the beasts could bask on the rock – was great for viewing.
During these years of my young-boy-as-a-roo-viewer period, one of the better opportunities to see the beasts was of course on the television.
I refer to none other than Skippy The Bush Kangaroo
Skippy started in 1968 and ran, well it still runs today in some countries. It was basically Flipper in the Australian outback, but the producers really lucked out when they found Skippy for the lead role because he was the god of kangaroos. There’s basically nothing Skippy couldn’t do. He played drums! He scuba dived! He fought dogs and snakes! He was a horse rustler, a piano player, a thief-catcher and even a radio operator:
Truly, I wanted to grow up to be at least half the man Skippy was.
My first experience with wild kangaroos (seeing them from car windows during bush/country drives doesn’t count) was at some point in 198X, during a walk in the bush near where we used to live. I think I was with my brother and we were walking ‘out the back of Kahiba’ somewhere where we were amazed to see a roo in a bit of a clearing behind someone’s house.
Now I had almost been exposed to a ‘real wild roo’ since a friend of mine in primary school (JF, ‘hola’ if you’re reading!) somehow had a pet kangaroo in her field. The facts of this memory are blurred indeed, but I recall the beast (it was smallish, maybe a wallaby) being only slightly domesticated and both myself and JF being afraid to approach it. I think her mum was taking care of it for someone… (amusingly enough I had another friend with a magpie pet once… another entry…)
Anyway some years after the first spot of a wild roo I was walking ‘out the back of Kotara’ with GW and possibly MT when we saw another roo in the distance through the trees. I’ll never admit we were actually lost at the time. We approached the roo, but he fled. Sue once told me that some of the roos actually kept at blackbutt occasionally got out, so maybe that’s what we saw? At any rate it was a strange place to see one, since that bushland is surrounded by homes.
Years later (or maybe around the same time) during a class trip to ‘a mountain somewhere up north’ (Sue remembers where; I always forget) we all saw a bunch of red kangaroos when we climbed this tall hill. I recall them being enormous (as reds are) and slightly unsettling. They perused us and hopped away, as wild roos always do.
At some point, probably around the age of 15 or 16, with a few friends we saw two roos on the sand at Dudley Beach as well. That was a weird sight. They were in the far distance, and we ignored them.
Seeing roos in the wild very often means seeing wild roos hopping away from you. They are inquisitive but shy beasts, and although I never tried I doubt they’d let you get very close. They are not very common in the suburbs, although they do turn up from time to time. I liken their frequency to deer in America. (Although here in Delmar we see far more deer than I ever saw kangaroos in Australia).
When I was there this past January I mentioned at a family gathering that I had seen a very large collection of kangaroos just beyond Kotara out the window of a train. There was some skepticism directed my way, but I was adamant. This sighting did happen (I verified with KLS) but I may have been a bit off as far as the location was concerned – instead it may have happened somewhere closer to Lake Macquarie.
At any rate there was the biggest collection of roos I have ever seen (in or out of a zoo) – 40 or 50 of them. Most were lazing themselves, a couple were hopping around. I recall many passengers were as surprised as I was, so I surmise such a sighting was quite rare.
A dream of mine (one of many) would be to have a house in the Australian outback. Something like this.
Where I could wake up and hear nothing but the birds, and peep out the window and see kangaroos in that field in the early morning.
Do I love kangaroos? Yes I do. They are one of a handful of Australiana that if I think about too much is always sure to rekindle homesickness in me.
When I dabbled in environmental education at Nuke U., the lecturer told us it was an open secret among staff that there was a mob of kangaroos living wild at the “back” of the campus. I can’t remember if they were supposed to have escaped from bio research pens (which may just be something I imagined) or had simply migrated across from Steelies Golf Club. Either way, I liked the idea that they were there. Readin’, ‘ritin’, ‘rithmetic and ‘roos!