16.09.2016 Kangaroo Sanctuary

Kangaroo Sanctuary Alice Springs

We had heard about the Kangaroo Sanctuary (rescue center) in Alice Springs long before we started working on the farm.

Now that we were in Alice Springs, we looked into how we could visit the sanctuary and if it was allowed to hold a baby kangaroo. We quickly found out that the sanctuary is also the private property of the owner and that a sunset tour is offered on Wednesdays to Fridays, costing $85 per person.

At first, that sounds quite expensive, but now that we have been there and learned so much more about kangaroos, the money is simply for a good cause and the tour was definitely worth it! The owner of the sanctuary told us some interesting things, which we will now list for you: - If kangaroos are lying by the side of the road (dead), it is best to always stop and, in the case of a female, look inside the pouch to see if there is a baby (joey) there. It turns out that the pouch is made entirely of muscles and it protects the baby. Here at the sanctuary, we held a baby named Berry. The baby is now 4 months old and was found by the roadside in the pouch of its mother, who had been dead for 4 days... We drove past about 50 dead kangaroos, from the beginning to the end of a national park. There were definitely females among them...

We find it incredible that the baby survived in the pouch of its mother, who had been dead for 4 days. - If a kangaroo is raised by humans (it is not allowed to keep them as pets forever), there is really a lot to consider.

Kangaroos themselves do not know they are kangaroos. The owner told us that he has a kangaroo that was raised only with dogs and thought it was a dog. It is impossible to release this kangaroo back into the wild, as it has no fear of dingoes. The dingoes are the biggest enemies here. Another kangaroo was raised only in the vicinity of humans, without any other kangaroos, and when it was supposed to be released into the wild, it kept hopping back home. It just couldn't relate to the other kangaroos.

- A kangaroo can easily jump 8 meters in one leap, over long distances. All in all, the tour was very interesting and next year the owner plans to open a small hospital for the rescued kangaroo babies. What was also great was that we were allowed to carry the baby as long as we wanted. It wasn't taken away from us after 20 seconds.

There were a total of 18 people on the tour and 3 babies were passed from person to person when they became too heavy. (They weigh about 4-5 kilograms) Google 'Roger Kangaroo Sanctuary Alice Springs' and you will discover a muscly kangaroo. We had seen him on Facebook before and thought it was fake, but today we were able to see him live. It's unbelievable, those muscles... Unfortunately, he didn't stand up, but you could still see it when he was sitting. Roger himself is already 11 years old and these animals can live up to 12 years. Roger's son Montie has already taken over the role of the boss.

The next day, we explored Alice Springs a bit more with Benny, Franzi unfortunately had to work :-(. Tomorrow morning we will continue our journey and Benny and Franzi will also fly to Bali on Monday. It was really nice to visit them here. And honestly, it didn't seem nearly as bad as everyone talks about Alice Springs.