On the Wallaby

[A Tasmanian pademelon, aka a rufous wallaby] 

Australia's a big country

An' Freedom's humping bluey,

An' Freedom's on the wallaby

Oh! don't you hear 'er cooey?

Henry Lawson’s 1891 poem, “Freedom on the Wallaby”, made famous an Australian saying that had already been around for half a century. It was the shearers’ strike of the 1890s that made going “on the wallaby” a commonplace. It meant travelling around the bush, carrying only your essential gear (“humping bluey”), looking for work.

It’s a notion that exerts a romantic pull on today’s overwhelmingly urban populace. While the original possibility of starvation might have been forgotten, the rest of the fantasy retains a strong hold on grey nomads and many other Australians. The freedom of the road; the ability to move on to wherever the weather or your fancy leads, has huge appeal.

But what about the actual wallaby from which the saying derives? Is there anything about the smaller relation of the kangaroo that we ought emulate or admire? For starters there’s its wonderfully warm, weather-proof coat. See one fluffed and hunched against the rain or snow of the Tasmanian highlands, and you see a creature perfectly adapted to its surroundings. Add its efficient mode of travel, its ability to find food and shelter almost anywhere, and its in-built load carrying pouch, and there’s much to envy.

[Bennetts wallabies in snow, Walls of Jerusalem National Park] 

Over the last few years our garden and local bush have given me ample opportunity to observe our two local wallaby species: the Bennetts wallaby (Macropus rufogriseus) and the Tasmanian pademelon (Thylogale billardierii). Both are abundant to the extent that we hear their foot-thumping and territorial coughing/growling during the night.

There’s joy enough in sharing our space with such wonderful creatures, but we also gain their services as grass removers. I could say lawnmowers, but that would imply that our bit of grass is lawn-like. They even re-process said grass in a pelletised form of manure. On the debit side we do lose the unprotected foliage of any tasty plants in our garden. They have even developed a taste for bay leaves and lemons. Still, overall we’re happy with the balance sheet between us.

[A tell-tale wallaby scat in the garden] 

Beyond our fence the bush is criss-crossed with wallaby tracks. They intersect with human bush tracks at various points, and reveal an instructive contrast. Where the human tracks tend to be linear, grid-like, the wallaby tracks (also called “pads”) at first appear rather random. But follow the pads for a while and you’ll often find they have a clever efficiency about them.

Where there is water to be found, the pads move neatly across the slope – diagonally where necessary – from shelter or food to the water source. Rarely are the tracks steeply straight up or down the slope. Often they are through, or close to, any sheltering foliage.

[A wallaby pad crosses a slope in our local bush] 

Bushwalking is my preferred form of going “on the wallaby”. My “bluey” is a backpack; my swag a sleeping bag and tent; my “toil” is to struggle up a mountain, around a lake or through a canyon. These places pay me back in a currency that can’t be counted.

In more remote parts of Tasmania I'll confess I've occasionally become confused between human tracks and animal pads, and have found myself literally on the wallaby (tracks). Given the multi-generational nature of animal movements, such animal pads can be a well-worn and efficient means of getting from one place to another. 

But there are a couple of caveats for following pads. Firstly I’ll want to know that the wallaby (or wombat, or whatever) was wanting to go the same way as I am. And secondly I’ll want to be sure I can actually, physically, follow their track. Wombats and pademelons in particular are very good at finding their way beneath and through thick bush. I’ve found to my cost that I’m next-to-useless at doing the same while wearing a large backpack. As Lawson could have told me, it's not always easy being on the wallaby.

What’s That You See, Skip?

It’s a nightly ritual. With just a hint of mystery. I walk the dog before feeding her and putting her to bed. We never go far. It’s out the front door – as often as not with the outside lights off – and across the driveway to the fence.

[a pademelon: hunched and wary]

A tangled vine, some sort of Kennedia, has colonised the fence, screening us from the vacant lot next door. As the dog finds a spot to urinate, I peer over the fence into the dark. I often make out shapes moving in the grass: the small furtive bundle of a bandicoot; the hunched suggestion of a pademelon, and just occasionally the bolder upright alertness of a Bennetts wallaby.

[a Bennetts wallaby]  

Our dog is nearly deaf, so she may not hear them even when they thump the ground in warning. She’s also half blind. But she knows they’re there, straining at the leash, keen to take her knowledge further. In the darkness I too lack visual accuity. I know only by hint, and by long practice, that the dark shape sitting alert is a pademelon not a bush. Some nights I say a soft hello, wondering what it can see or sense of me. I’m sure its vision is far better than mine. But, I wonder, how much better? And what does it actually see?

Zoology has been slow to answer these sorts of question. The strangeness of our marsupials – to European minds at least –  inclined scientists to consider them primitive at best; an evolutionary backwater at worst. When it came to understanding marsupial eye sight, our primate bias literally coloured our thinking. The long-held view was that few mammals – and then only primates – could see in colour. The rest, including marsupials, saw in black and white.

But some clever research at the University of Western Australia has found that marsupials do see in colour, and probably in more colours than we do. The human retina, the light-sensing part of the eye, has two types of cells called rods and cones. Rods help with vision in low light, while cones help with colour vision and detail. The retinas of most other mammals don’t have cone cells, so those mammals don’t see in colour. After the WA research, we now know that marsupials, like primates, have both rods and cones. In fact they have extra sensitivity in their cones, allowing some of them to see in the ultraviolet light range. In addition their vision span is around 300 degrees, in comparison to the human span of around 180 degrees.

[wallaby footprints]  

I guess I should have known about these special marsupial powers through watching episodes of “Skippy the Bush Kangaroo” on TV in the 1960s and ‘70s. In that bush melodrama, Skippy always seemed to come to the rescue of the humans by warning of danger ... (“What’s that Skip? The bank robbers are hiding in the bush!?”) ... or by untying the rope-bound humans (who knew kangaroos had prehensile paws?) ... and even by jumping on deadly snakes so the ranger and his son could escape.

Perhaps science has at last caught up, and can now explain why “Skip” was always a step ahead of the bad guys. She could see so much better than the humans, thanks to her wider vision and ability to see further along the spectrum.

["I'm watching you." A well-dressed pademelon.]  

Next time I’m weeing Noo late at night, I’ll have a new respect for “Skip” and her friends. As they peer back at me through the gloaming, I’ll be aware that they’re seeing a lot more than I’d previously guessed. I might even have to dress a little better, making sure I’m colour coordinated. It doesn’t do to upset the neighbours.

Overland Track, Tasmania

[A selection of images from a recent Overland Track trip. Click on the first image to open the Picasa web album ... enjoy!]

The Nearby Wild: Part 1

[a Bennetts Wallaby relaxes in a national park, the kind of place you'd expect to see one]

I must have been about 10 or 11 years old when our teacher decided our class needed to broaden its horizons. He arranged for each of us to correspond with an American pen friend. As a learning exercise it largely failed. My only lasting memory was amazed disbelief that my American counterpart thought kangaroos actually hopped down Australian streets.

The wheel turns. 7 years ago I published a book, Habitat Garden*, about attracting wildlife to your garden. We tried to practice what I was preaching by growing endemic plants in our spacious backyard. In short the theory is that if you provide plants that help shelter, feed and house wildlife, then it will use it. Build it and they will come!

Since then we’ve moved house, but only into a newer house in the backyard of the old house. Essentially that wildlife-attracting backyard has become our frontyard. And it has grown up to the point where the theory of planting for animal habitat has become an astonishing reality.

I’m not just talking about possums here: there are few prizes for being able to attract those furry rogues to your garden. My astonishment is rather in finding evidence of at least three different macropod species in the garden. That’s right: kangaroos hopping down our street! Well, not strictly kangaroos, but their smaller macropod siblings. Potoroos, pademelons and Bennetts wallabies are all in evidence in both our garden and our nearby bushland.

I did a double-take when I saw a Bennetts wallaby hop across the road in broad daylight a week or two ago. Yes, it is a bushy area, but it is still suburbia, and such things are only supposed to happen in the imaginations of foreigners!

Then a couple of nights ago, I took our ageing dog for her evening wee-walk. I can normally keep her on the vocal chain – using voice commands rather than a lead. But as we walked into the dark she heard and saw something and twanged away like an arrow, despite my yells.

I suspected she’d seen the neighbours’ cat and was simply continuing her long and fruitless conflict with Cheech. But a moment later a dark shadow bounced out of the gloom and almost ran into me. A pademelon! As shocked as me, it careered sideways, colliding with the mesh fence that stood between it and its favoured paddock. Bouncing off that it darted into the bush of our frontyard,  the “habitat garden”, with Nuala the dog in hot pursuit.

Thankfully the plant cover was thick enough for the pademelon to evade our dog. Or perhaps a canny “paddy” can always outrun an ageing quadruped. At any rate the dog came back to its astonished owner, and the pademelon leapt off to the safety of the nearby bush.

As I put the dog inside for the night, I pondered on the privilege of learning the difference between theory and reality. We truly do share this place with other beings, some wilder than others.

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* ABC Gardening Australia Books, 2003. I believe it is now out of print, but the desperate could try eBay!