by NOEL MURPHY
They’re Geelong’s secret residents, hiding in back yards, sleeping during the day and foraging on garden beds and foliage of a night time.
Swamp wallabies and eastern grey kangaroos make their way into Geelong every day, according to wildlife rescuer David Burrell, to munch and chomp on plentiful suburban food supplies.
Some have been living in town for years.
Mr Burrell removes hundreds of the animals a year and says North Geelong through the city centre to Highton and Grovedale are all popular destinations for the hungry macropods.
Mr Burrell, who runs the Leopold Wildlife Shelter and Rescue Service, nabbed a wallaby in Newtown’s on Sunday after it crossed busy Aberdeen Street and took up lodgings in a Skene Street property.
“He cleared an eight-foot fence when we arrived but we caught it two doors up,” he told the Independent.
“He was a good-sized male, probably five or six years old, around 40kg and he stood about four feet high flat-footed.
“We caught him by hand, we don’t use nets or tranquilisers, and transported him to the You Yangs.”
Mr Burrell said he’d been removing “at least one a day for the last 30 years”.
“They come in from the bush along the train line, the waterfront, the Moorabool River.
“They’re usually in trouble once they’re in town and some we catch straight away but others will stay for years.
“They can survive quite well. They’re nocturnal so they might sleep behind garage during the day, and they’re very secretive and solitary animals.
“They’re omnivores so they eat a little bit of everything and it suits their nomadic life to move around.
“There’s a lot of food in town, the property I was at on Sunday was like a bush setting, the wallaby would’ve been happy to stay there long as he could, they’re often happy to stay in town.
“At a mimimum, we catch one a day but sometimes three or four. Ninety per cent of them are swamp wallabies, occasionally we get an eastern grey, but we’ve caught them in the city mall, in Myers Street, Grovedale, Highton …”
Mr Burrell said catching wallabies and roos with a minimum of stress for the animals required a careful one-on-one approach. He said he read and mimicked the animal’s body language as he approached them.
If you spot a wallaby or roo in town, you can contact the Leopold Wildlife Shelter and Rescue on 0409 002 258.
