Wednesday, July 18, 2012

TOO MANY 'ROOS?

Today I'm posting from Hervey Bay where my parents live in a retirement village.
I'm up here for Mum's 90th birthday celebrations later in the week.

Hervey Bay is a four and a half drive north of Brisbane and I usually do the drive on my own.
I rather like the time on my own in the car on the way up here.
I listen to my favourite radio station ( singing along ) for the first two and a half hours till I get to the little town of Gympie where I stop at Macca's for a coffee ( and sometimes raisin toast ).

It's a time to think things over, .. solve problems, ... plan.......

The second part of the trip  ( one and a half hours ) takes me through Tiaro, then Maryborough and on to Hervey Bay and the signal of my radio station doesn't  reach this far so then I switch to CDs.
I turn up the volume and really belt out the songs as I speed along.

Yesterday, as I was listening to the radio news, I heard an item about kangaroos.

Because of the wonderful seasons ( ie rain instead of drought !) we have had here in the last two years, apparently the kangaroo population in Australia has skyrocketed to around 20 000 000 !!

Yes, 20 000 000 kangaroos !
Of course numbers like that spark the old debate about whether these huge numbers need to be controlled by culling to lessen the impact they have on the cattle and grain industries and it becomes very emotional.

Anyhow ........................


imagine how surprised I was when I looked at an area of the retirement village in which new houses were being constructed and saw this ...

( you might need to click on the photo to make it bigger )

I tried to get a bit closer for a better view.


This small group (mob ) seem to have become cut off from the local bush by the fences that have sprung up around them so they have taken up residence here.


Uh oh,  I've been spotted !


From what I could see from a distance there appeared to be one large male with a small harem of females and their young both in and out of the pouch.

Eventually they will be pushed out by the houses as they are built but for now they have all they need and seem quite content...
and it's lovely to see them happily co-existing there.

Cheers.

8 comments:

  1. Art risk of playing gooseberry here! Fancy having kangaroos in one's back garden. I think I have problems with badgers but imagine one of those roos trying to get in through the cat flap!

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  2. we have wild deer here, but what fun to have a kangaroo!
    when we lived in Bucks, there was a small colony of wallabies living wild, no doubt escaped from someone's private collection.

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  3. That means we have almost as many kangaroos as people. I had no idea the Roo population was so prolific.

    Nice to see them in a semi suburban area though. Usually you have to travel to the deep dark country to see one.

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  4. They are magnificent creatures even though they seem like enormous rodents. Maybe they are enormous rodents.

    20,000,000! That's almost as many kangaroos as there are cars circling Atlanta at any given time on Interstate Highway 285....

    Do they leave big poop like cows and horses? (The kangaroos, I mean, not the cars circling Atlanta....)

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  5. Oh, they are cute.I hope they might be able to resolve the problem by shooting them with contraceptive darts or something.
    How sweet seeing you and Tony's lovey-dovey comments to each other.
    I must say I also like long car journeys on my own.
    I hope the parents are OK.

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  6. Great post! Lovely to see them, as you say, co-existing, so happily. I also love long car journeys on my own and do just as you do! It's a four and a half hour drive up north to Manchester, where two of our children live. Ros

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  7. Amazing. I am glad to see these wonderful odd creatures are not declining like most of the unique birds of NZ. Here our story is so depressing, for the most part.

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