My animal friends in Australia

My name is Helen and I am from Australia. In Australia my family lives on a farm in the country and we live in a wide, flat landscape with many trees and animals. My family are wildlife rescuers and carers and we look after many types of native Australian animals. If an animal is injured we help rescue and rehabilitate them, or if there is an accident on the road and a mother animal is killed we look after the orphan baby until it is grown up and can be released back into the wild. The animals we care for are not our pets, we love and care for them but they will always return to their home in the wild. We carefully follow the process of Rescue, Rehabilitation and Release. Of course sometimes the animals we release come back to visit. Here are some grown-up kangaroos eating grass in my family’s garden.

We care for native Australian birds, reptiles and turtles, but my favourite are kangaroos and wallaroos. Kangaroos and wallaroos are part of a species category called ‘macropod’ (macro = big, pod = foot). Baby kangaroos and wallaroos are called ‘joeys’ and when they are small they need a lot of special care. They sleep in cloth bags we make to replicate their mother’s pouches. Here are some wallaroo joeys, notice the female joeys are pale and the male joey is dark.

Joeys need to drink a unique milk rich in vitamins multiple times a day and we feed them using special bottles that have very long plastic teats (because their noses are so long!).

When the joeys grow up they start to explore the safe farm and make friends with wild kangaroos. Slowly they become adults and finally they leave our house and garden to live in the wild and have their own joeys. We are always very happy when they come back and visit, but for us the biggest reward is to see the kangaroos and wallaroos become wild animals that are healthy and free.