Kangaroo Carnage

After you get over the initial delight in seeing so many kangaroos in the wild, bouncing in the sand and peeking at you over the bushes, you soon begin to realize something is wrong.

New South Wales has been suffering drought conditions for over six months. We have seen Road Train loads of hay being trucked in to help save the cattle and we met a farmer in the back country that told us that their sheep stocks were a third of normal as the rest had been sold rather than have them starve.

None of this works for wildlife. 

Kangaroos are herbivores eating grasses, flowers, ferns and leaves and the countryside in the outback currently has nome of these in any abundance. The recent rains have made some grass grow but a lot of this is where the water runs off the roads.

Kangaroos eating closer and closer to roads has predictable consequences. On the 200km stretch from Wilcannia to Broken Hill on the highway, we probably saw at least a thousand dead kangaroos. Hard to say how long each had been there but that’s a staggering number of dead animals.

In the other photos, the red kangaroo was just outside White Cliffs but too weak to run away. The grey guy was a few feet from out motel essentially scavenging for scraps.

Heartbreaking.