Uncommonly Common Wallaroos
We’ve always had kangaroos on our farm. I used to see 2 or 3 each day. I try not to drive at night because they’ve bounded off cliff edges to fly straight across the bonnet of my car, and that tends to unnerve me.
It’s not as bad as the time I was driving on our dirt road when 4 Eastern Grey Kangaroos jumped out from the tree line though. I swerved to avoid the first and almost hit the second. One roo rolled beneath my car while another skidded on the fresh gravel. I clipped it near my headlight.
Stopping the car, getting out, I found all the roos had gone. There were no injuries despite the impact, not even to the car. Sitting on the road edge in the quiet of night, waiting until my heart stopped thumping took a while.
Three decades ago I swerved to miss 2 roos trying to kamikaze themselves into my little hatchback at 1 am. I was springing a surprise visit on the boyfriend who became my husband.
Trying to avoid a pair of big Eastern Grey’s, the car went into a skid. Sliding around in a 180, I veered off road. Careening down an embankment, the car went rolling. I must have blacked out momentarily. Stopped by fence posts, I woke upside-down hanging by a seatbelt. Disorientated and concussed, my body stung and throbbed in too many places.
Not knowing where I was or when it was, I squeezed out the window to go on a moonless walk with a badly sprained ankle and only 1 shoe. Through the scrub, I limped into a holiday cabin km away. Sneaking in like Goldilocks, but still high on adrenaline, disappointed the place had no phone. I shook with wild tremors for hours before the shock subsided.
Hospitalised the next day, my entire body was bruised and my car a write off, all to avoid hitting roos.
I guess that’s what it means to be an animal lover.
Fast forward 30 years and into the worst drought in living memory. Currently 28 months of little or no rain, and counting. We had rain and hail a month ago, but it was followed by strong winds and 35 degree weather that dried out the soil moisture.
In the last fortnight we’ve also had a heatwave.
A crazy heatwave we didn’t need or want.
When I was a girl, each New Year was warm. Too hot to eat glazed ham or roast pork at Christmas, we’d pick at salad, loads of icy drinks, sweets and the chocolates we had to put in the fridge to stop from melting.
Stinking hot 40 years ago meant 32 degrees, maybe 35 tops. Those summer holiday times were spent jumping in and out of our pool. Pre air-conditioning, we lazed around while our parents and other adults complained about the heat, watching sport and fanning themselves.
We used paper straws that grew limp if you left them in the malted milkshakes our mothers made too long. Over 30 degrees meant it was too warm to eat meals. Four decades ago, I lived on ice-blocks and raw veg I would pick from my father’s backyard garden.
Climate change is real.
Global warming is happening now.
It’s hotter, drier and more arid than ever.
In the last fortnight, 11 days have hit 38+, the other 3 a very warm 36 degrees. It’s so unseasonal you can’t stay outside for more than 2 minutes without feeling queasy.
Going to the garage this morning I was knocked by a wall of heat. Like being too close to an open fire, I sensed the skin on my face instantly drying up.
Supposed to be 42 degrees yesterday, the mercury rose to 43. I can’t remember it ever being so hot before; the air shimmers with it.
Still 36 degrees after 8 pm last night, we ate dinner watching countless Wallaroos drink from the tub or bird bath. Suffering in the long drought, their fur looked mangy, covered with ticks and bulbous tumours. The few joeys to survive this long dry spell were peppered with parasites.
Roos eat my lavender. They have demolished 34 rose bushes, countless geraniums, shrubs, saplings, tube stock, and even chewed the spikes off the rosemary bushes that are so pungent they’ve never been touched before.
Regardless of the devastation, I still love them. After watching them most days for 28 years how couldn’t I?
I forgive them.
I know they’re suffering in the intense heat.
Poor animals, riddled with ticks, they’re just scrounging enough food and water to stay alive.
Living with our farmhouse near the edge of a cliff means lots of Common Wallaroos. Normally these mid-size macropods are shy, mostly appearing from dusk to dawn. You never saw them any other time. Now they are out all day and all night.
When my husband took me for a ride around the property in the Can-am 3 months ago, I lost count of the number of roos we saw at midday. I’d seen 167, more hopping beasties than on any day in 20 years. Then, I probably saw 50 more. The roos come from a 30 km radius; searching for green grass.
Hand feeding cattle, cows and bulls wolf down the fodder leaving nothing. The wild roos search acres for anything edible. When they can’t find enough they stop breeding, abandon their joeys and come to our garden. Because we water our lawn, the roos act like living mowers.
A succession of animals come to drink at our old tub and birdbath each evening. Refilling all day, the water went to our dog, my half wild peacocks, at least 500 birds, a goanna, lizards and 5 scraggly Wallaroos.
Yesterday and the day before it was 43 degrees, today feels the same. The centre of Australia experienced 47, Sydney is cringing at an expected 36 today. Some parts of western NSW are predicted to hit 50, and I live in the north west of the state.
The temperatures are abnormal.
The weather was never so extreme when I was a girl.
It has changed.
The environment is being transformed,
and not in a good way.
A million fish died in low lying water after an algal bloom in Australia this week. The news warns asthmatics, elderly and the very young to stay indoors. Hospital emergency departments are overrun with victims of heatstroke and drownings. The worst drought in living memory continues. Daily we are breaking existing weather records for daytime highs and overnight lows.
Last night I woke twice, hot and wretched. It was still 30 degrees at 4 am, when things cool down before dawn.
Funny how there are still leaders of the free world, he who should not be named, still denying climate change.
It is all too real at my place.
What will it take for people to change; for opinion to alter inaction into action?
Do we wait until there are no more Polar Bears left in the Arctic?
Do we really want to lose our unique animals, plants or birds because we love to ride around the world in planes that guzzle vast quantities of fossil fuel with every flight? Are we doing all we can to eliminate coal burning power stations and substitute renewables? Is clean energy still too hard, too costly and too much trouble for governments to initiate?
Bees and insects pollinate the fruits, vegetables and grains we have existed on since we lived in caves. (Neanderthals never did survive solely on mammoth meat.) Bee numbers have been in serious decline for a decade. Insect numbers have dropped severely in New Zealand.
In 20 years are all our natural foods going to be pollination by hand or robot?
Are our grandchildren going to taste juice from the Valencia orange tree I had in my backyard growing up? Will they get to savour plump blackberries they pluck off the vine themselves, or feast on sweet, sweet corn at Christmas as I did?
At 6, I spent most of our 6 week summer holidays in our swimming pool. I was a living torpedo on the backyard Slip-n-Slide. I body surfed at stunning Newcastle beaches in my teens. I ran endlessly through dad’s lawn sprinkler to cool off. But, it’s so steamy all those are virtually prohibitive now, simply too hot to be anywhere outside.
I see a joey in a pouch; a rarity this year.
I’m privileged to witness it.
It makes me smile a melancholy smile.
It gives me hope, but I’m sad at the same time.
The TV is blaring about car insurance. The roos giant ears pivot at the strange sounds, but it is beyond caring as it desperately laps the water.
It’s strange for ground dwellers to stand and lean and drink deeply from a birdbath. I’ve never known it before. Never seen their glazed eyes, matted fur riddled with swollen ticks, or shaking front paws either. In all the years I’ve tried they’ve never let me photograph them so close.
It’s uncommon, unnatural.
The environment I knew is radically changing, trying to adapt to a harsher climate. We’ve had less rain than they have in dry deserts here, and the farm is in a mild, temperate climatic zone.
I move back inside to stack the dishwasher and bathe beneath the coolness of the air-conditioning vent.
Still too warm and uncomfortable, I wonder if the world has moved beyond caring about global warming, or if it’s already too late.
