On the road again

After saying goodbye to friends from the Armidale Branch and spending our last night with Sonya and Jim we headed out on our month long trip (walkabout) around the Outback (interior of Australia).  Here’s a map of our route.  There’s a whole lot of nothing out there in the middle,  hours and hours of driving through the desert.  Oh well, we’ve got lots stuff of to keep us busy. 

 

 

 

We stopped along the way in Tamworth, the country/western capitol of Australia.  They have one of the largest festivals in the world. Who would have thought?   It’s not that big of a place but apparently more than 40,000 show up each August.  This giant guitar is one of the attractions in town.  

 

About 90k outside of Dubbo, we stopped to have lunch at a roadside table; there was another couple there so we thought about driving away but they motioned us to come over.  Before we got out of the car the couple brought out a pet – a baby kangaroo.  Turns out they work with a wildlife rescue group.  They often stop by the side of the road when they see a kangaroo has been hit to make sure there isn’t a joey in the pouch (female kangaroos are almost always pregnant or have a joey).  In April, they stopped by to check on a kangaroo and found the dead animal to be a female so they knew there had to be a joey somewhere in the area. They looked around and found the joey had crawled over and snuggled up to the front tire of the truck.  If they hadn’t looked closely they would have run over him.  He was in really bad shape, bald, malnourished, had pneumonia, and was covered with black ants – both inside and out.  He wouldn’t have lasted more than a day or two longer. 

The  couple named him Jake and treat him just like you would a regular baby.  They sterilize his bottles, he wears a diaper (nappy) when he’s in the house, they hold him and cuddle him.  He’s doing really well.  He’s put on weight, grown his hair back and is well on his way to being healthy.   He’ll eventually be taken to a wildlife reserve where he’ll learn to live with a mob (group of kangaroos) and then be released in the wild. 

The couple asked Ian if he’d like to hold Jake and he jumped at the chance to do it.  Hannah wanted to know where she can sign up to work with wildlife rescue.  I told her we could check into it when we get back but unfortunately, there won’t be many kangaroos rescued in Utah.  Darn!