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Our first Christmas in Cattai National Park, 2004, Drew and I were walking around the hill on which the old farmstead stands, following a wire fenceline between the cropped grass of the hill and the waist-high wilderness of the abandoned farmland beyond. Suddenly we both had a sense we were being watched, and looked up to see two big grey kangaroos, young males, perhaps 10 metres away over the wire fence, posed in picture postcard perfection, facing each other but with their heads turned towards us, dead still and utterly alert. Reflexively we raised our cameras and took the shot they almost seemed to be expecting.
As we lowered our cameras they seemed to relax. (On reflection, I realised their genetic memory probably knows that moment of encounter as a high chance of instant death for one of them.) We moved slowly on along the path we’d been following, a bush obscured our view of them but now we saw a couple more, lifting their heads from grazing as we came into view, not quite as close as the first two. We looked back and could now see that pair again; they had turned away and were hopping slowly over a slight rise, apparently herding a small crowd of females and young ones ahead of them. The next two young males followed and as we kept walking the last three came up tall in the grass as we passed them, three enormous mature males who gazed gravely at us from perhaps 12-15 metres away. In all their intelligent eyes, all their level, sensitive, wary gazes, all their alert, relaxed-but-ready body language, was the same unmistakeable message: don’t come any closer; we have no quarrel with you; just leave us be.
We did, of course. You don’t argue with Spirit of Kangaroo.
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