According to television reports, Neil rescued the struggling marsupial by nursing it back to shore on his 8’3″ gun, “…we thought maybe this was something kangaroos do,” McCallum told channel sevens Sunrise program. “So we let him go for a while, but then when he got stuck in the rip and was taken about 200 meters out to the ocean we saw he was in trouble…so I grabbed my board and lended him a hand.”
Once ashore the young roo sucked up some big breaths, took a second to right itself then sprung off. While this heart-warming tale (pun intended) had a nicely bundled outcome, the same cannot be said for the many roos facing certain death around the nations capital right now.
The Australian Defence Force (ADF) is in the process of culling more than 3,000 kangaroos from two ADF sites. The ACT government and ADF say the cull is necessary because of overgrazing and the risk of kangaroos starving. The planned cull has revived memories of a 2004 cull and is something ACT Animal Liberation president Mary Hayes says is unnecessary and inhumane, “It is a very cruel, violent way to treat animals, on a par to just treating them as if they were weeds to be mown or pulled out,” she told ABC Radio.
Under the planned cull, 2,800 eastern grey kangaroos would be shot on the Majura Training Area, a defence firing range complex outside Canberra. Having just returned from Canberra myself, I reflected on a few close encounters I had with these beautiful Aussie legends while walking in these outer suburbs. Whether it’s my recent romantic notions of these creations or not, it’s always a shame when animals (and their young) are killed. Many would argue they’re far from endangered etc but that’s not the point. If there’s pain and suffering involved for any critter, I’m bummed – end of story.
