As you know I love animals – and one animal I always wanted to see is the kangaroo. So when I travelled to New Zealand 13 years ago I had a stopover in Sydney for four days and took the chance to go on a trip to the Blue Mountain National Park. Here I saw lots of cute grey kangaroos who were quite used to visitors and you could get really close to them. The grey kangaroos are of course much smaller than the red ones, but the red ones can only be found in the arid areas of Australia. So seeing a red one in real life (and not just in a zoo) is still on my list of animals I want to meet. And for this I would have to fly out to Alice Springs.
A few weeks ago I watched the two-part documentary “Kangaroo Dundee” on the BBC about the amazing rescue work of Brolga (Chris Barnes), who lives in Australia’s outback in Alice Springs. Brolga rescues orphaned and injured red joeys, he often finds on Australia’s roads and gives them a second chance by raising them like a kangaroo mum would.
He started his Baby Kangaroo Rescue Centre in 2005 and has now got his own wildlife sanctuary, which he built in 2009-11. His rescued mob of 25 kangaroos enjoys 90 acres of untouched bush land. Brolga, who looks a bit like Australia’s answer to Patrick Swayze, lives in very basic accommodation which resembles a shed and shares it with kangaroo babies day and night where he is constantly tending to the needs of his vulnerable charges.
Kangaroos, similar to baby elephants, take a lot of time to grow and need a lot of warmth and motherly love, so Brolga keeps them in pillow cases to simulate the mum’s warm and safe pouch. The film followed him rescuing baby William from his dead mum’s pouch who was killed on the road to his final release back to the wild.
