My big footed baby…

My big footed baby??!!

OK so I haven’t had a baby! But I had one for  little while.  One of the community members gave this little guy to me on Friday night.  They had been on a hunting trip and he was in the pouch of one of their catches.  

I was at the Rec hall and someone calls me over to the meshed up window, “I’ve got something for you. Can you look after it??” At first I thought it was a weird looking puppy… but it was a baby (1.4 kg) big red kangaroo’s joey, with no fur and feet longer than it’s body. Anyone with babies can laugh at me now, but after one night of feeding the thing every two hours and having to sleep with it on my skin to keep it from shivering I was so exhausted.  One of the white fellers on the community had some old formula and a special bottle so at least I was armed, but it took me ages to warm him up and calm him down…

More milk!!!

There is a happy ending I promise… The next afternoon (deliriously tired after no sleep) I drove for two hours to Kulgra Roadhouse with him under my t-shirt this time trying to protect him from the heat! I waited for some compassionate tourist to come in to fill-up, trying to get the little guy to look as cute and helpless as possible.  Eventually I managed to find someone who looked trustworthy to take him three hours into the refuge in Alice Springs.  They were ready and waiting to get him into a humidicrib…. I was a bit sad to let him go, but without fur I couldn’t keep his temperature constant enough… 

 

I have the biggest ears in the world

I am hoping that today he is nice and warm and that maybe one day I’ll see him in the wild with the biggest ears in Australia! I know that most people think I am crazy (pretty much everyone laughed at me) and I know that I am definitely not desert-proofed yet, but I am pretty sure not even the desert out here can get quite that far under my skin!

Was thinking again about time last night… and wrote this (I was somewhat sleep deprived but I thought I’d post it anyhow)

What time is it?

I wonder why time must always be linear, why we must draw lines through everything. Out here later can mean anything from three minutes to a week or a month. Tomorrow is a loose term, in fact tomorrow may not come until next week.  There is something I like about the fluidity of time here.

I have always spent time worrying about the future, held tightly onto memories of the past, in fact I think I sweep myself from past to present to future constantly.  I feel like people here understand that there is more room for contentment in the present.  I think I am learning some of this. But it is hope and dreaming for the future that I am missing most.

Somewhere amongst it all I have learnt some other strange things…

• If you get enough food dye in your eye it will come out of your nose.
• It is possible to over-do the amount of yeast you use in damper
• Wombats usually poo in odd numbers (still not sure about this one because there a definately no wombats here, although I am assured it is true and that their poo has eight sides and can be used as a dice)
• Here a ‘cheeky dog’ is not one that might try and steal your lunch, it is one that might try and steal your leg.
• Raw sweet potato can make you feel really sick
• Pears do not freeze well
• Just because you can fit in a chest freezer does not necessarily mean you should get inside one.

Tonight I sat on the back step, looking out over the damn and the stars seemed to take up more room in the sky than the darkness itself. Sometimes out here on nights like this I feel acutely alone. Tonight I felt small, less significant but peaceful.  I think that the whole community is asleep, apart from the distant and irregular dog barking or generator humming. 

Hope everyone is sleeping peacefully in Melbourne.

xo

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