I often get a fresh shock as one of the males straightens up. The sheer size of him!
They’re all handsome, with admirable carriage. Straight backs and necks, heads held high as they bound across the paddock or through the trees. The females are smaller, but retain the well-defined facial bone structure of the species; they never look like wallabies. In their dusky greyish-brown coats, paler front fur, black highlights of ears, nose and paws, and their large dark eyes, they are always elegant.
Their young are just as cute as the wallaby babies—big-eyed, fluffy, uncoordinated, given to twisting themselves back-to-front to scratch at fleas or ticks, or leaning back at an odd angle to scrabble at their tummy fur, or corkscrewing themselves vertically into the air, just for fun. Like the wallaby joeys, they sometimes play at sparring with their mothers, who are very tolerant, literally turning the other cheek until they’ve had enough, when they give the annoying child a cuff and move on. The joey shakes its head several times, as if to clear the stars it’s seeing, then comes back for more.
I am pleased that the kangaroos now ignore me almost as much as the wallabies do, if I move steadily. As I’m seeing several family groups now, not just one, I’d say they’re here to stay. When I opened the yard gate the other day, a female kangaroo grazing very close by remained so unconcerned that her joey, who’d been dozing on the grass, stayed right where he was instead of panicking.
Only recently, for the very first time, I have seen a Swamp or Black Wallaby and her joey near my yard. Dark-chocolate velvety fur, small head, usually seen in the ferny forests on the shady southern side of my ridge. I assume the drought is sending them foraging further afield. They eat bracken, so I hope they start on mine.
I’ll learn more about these newer neighbours when they’re fully at ease with me, when they understand how this refuge works. That is, they’re the occupants; I’m just the cleaner-upper of introduced weeds and bouncer of introduced animals. And protector.
When a wallaby stands still and looks me in the eye I cannot understand the kind of person that would see this as a chance to shoot it. I don’t want to be classed as the same species as humans who take pleasure in shooting such beautiful and harmless animals, those who like living creatures as targets—not for food or self-protection, but for ‘fun’.
Here all native animals are protected from shooters. It is not so everywhere, despite what the laws say; especially with some weekenders who like to play at being tough bushmen, huntin’ ’n’ shootin’. Since it’s usually very late on a Saturday night when I hear the distant shots, the toughness is probably out of a bottle and I fear for both their discrimination and their accuracy.
I feel like warning my resident wallabies and wallaroos and kangaroos, anything big enough to be a target: ‘Don’t go down to the woods today’—stay up here with me. I could add, ‘And be glad our state forest is now a national park’, for they are allowing amateurs—‘almost professional but!’—to hunt and shoot feral animals in their/our state forests, without supervision. I’ll bet my local weekend shooters would like a go at that.
They are calling it ‘conservation hunting’. Who do they think this spin is kidding? Not the wounded feral animals that will escape to painful deaths, and the wounded or killed native animals hit ‘by mistake’, and their babies that starve as a result. Not to mention the odd bushwalker or birdwatcher accidentally potted—but they’re probably greenies anyway, so no great loss to the state.
Feral animals—deer, cats, dogs, pigs, foxes, rabbits, cane toads, camels, brumbies, introduced birds like starlings and Indian Mynahs— are a problem, but they didn’t ask to be brought here any more than our convict ancestors did.
If the criteria for extermination were ongoing
They’re all handsome, with admirable carriage. Straight backs and necks, heads held high as they bound across the paddock or through the trees. The females are smaller, but retain the well-defined facial bone structure of the species; they never look like wallabies. In their dusky greyish-brown coats, paler front fur, black highlights of ears, nose and paws, and their large dark eyes, they are always elegant.
Their young are just as cute as the wallaby babies—big-eyed, fluffy, uncoordinated, given to twisting themselves back-to-front to scratch at fleas or ticks, or leaning back at an odd angle to scrabble at their tummy fur, or corkscrewing themselves vertically into the air, just for fun. Like the wallaby joeys, they sometimes play at sparring with their mothers, who are very tolerant, literally turning the other cheek until they’ve had enough, when they give the annoying child a cuff and move on. The joey shakes its head several times, as if to clear the stars it’s seeing, then comes back for more.
I am pleased that the kangaroos now ignore me almost as much as the wallabies do, if I move steadily. As I’m seeing several family groups now, not just one, I’d say they’re here to stay. When I opened the yard gate the other day, a female kangaroo grazing very close by remained so unconcerned that her joey, who’d been dozing on the grass, stayed right where he was instead of panicking.
Only recently, for the very first time, I have seen a Swamp or Black Wallaby and her joey near my yard. Dark-chocolate velvety fur, small head, usually seen in the ferny forests on the shady southern side of my ridge. I assume the drought is sending them foraging further afield. They eat bracken, so I hope they start on mine.
I’ll learn more about these newer neighbours when they’re fully at ease with me, when they understand how this refuge works. That is, they’re the occupants; I’m just the cleaner-upper of introduced weeds and bouncer of introduced animals. And protector.
When a wallaby stands still and looks me in the eye I cannot understand the kind of person that would see this as a chance to shoot it. I don’t want to be classed as the same species as humans who take pleasure in shooting such beautiful and harmless animals, those who like living creatures as targets—not for food or self-protection, but for ‘fun’.
Here all native animals are protected from shooters. It is not so everywhere, despite what the laws say; especially with some weekenders who like to play at being tough bushmen, huntin’ ’n’ shootin’. Since it’s usually very late on a Saturday night when I hear the distant shots, the toughness is probably out of a bottle and I fear for both their discrimination and their accuracy.
I feel like warning my resident wallabies and wallaroos and kangaroos, anything big enough to be a target: ‘Don’t go down to the woods today’—stay up here with me. I could add, ‘And be glad our state forest is now a national park’, for they are allowing amateurs—‘almost professional but!’—to hunt and shoot feral animals in their/our state forests, without supervision. I’ll bet my local weekend shooters would like a go at that.
They are calling it ‘conservation hunting’. Who do they think this spin is kidding? Not the wounded feral animals that will escape to painful deaths, and the wounded or killed native animals hit ‘by mistake’, and their babies that starve as a result. Not to mention the odd bushwalker or birdwatcher accidentally potted—but they’re probably greenies anyway, so no great loss to the state.
Feral animals—deer, cats, dogs, pigs, foxes, rabbits, cane toads, camels, brumbies, introduced birds like starlings and Indian Mynahs— are a problem, but they didn’t ask to be brought here any more than our convict ancestors did.
If the criteria for extermination were ongoing
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