Roo tracks

 15 April 2021

I’ve taken to walking the kangaroo tracks of Barrm Birrm.  They cross the human tracks at angles, then disappear. Rather than walking for exercise on the road, I have been turning off and walking for adventure. 

A roo track begins as a definite thing, once I have my eye on in. It has its own logic: yes of course this is the way to get up this slope, I think to myself as I pad my way along. Incised into the grasses, the track runs in a long steady diagonal, the way a roo would move most easily, with that bounding, thumping movement, the tail a counterpoise to the leaning body. Leaning along the slope.

We see them in flight, urgent, doubling back in panic at the edge of the road to flee the vehicle. But when there is no urgency, and no danger, they pick their way more steadily, leaving these long traces through the grasses, easy to follow.

Then the trail seems to evaporate. It gets fainter, and I look around to see if I wandered off the trace. What would a roo do here, I think to myself, at this point of the slope? Or actually, a family of roos, the females out the front, the younger roos following, the male at the back. Ah, here’s the trail, just here, obvious when I find it again.

Or perhaps I don’t find it, and I must make my way now as a clunking human, through the grasses and small shrubs, lilies already up and preparing for warmer times, trying not to crush them in my great big shoes.  Back to a dirt road, gravel and clay, eroding as the rains fall and the running water picks up speed, forming deepening ruts that make driving the adventure humans crave, but the gravel loose and dangerous for a walker heading downhill.

I stay to the side, on the edge where the grasses let me keep my grip, and here is another roo track, heading in here.  I pick it up, happy to be back in the bush, surrounded by green, companion to these cautious animals, even if they aren’t around.  Sometimes they are, for I have been walking so quietly, and slowly, taking time to stop and look around, that without any anticipation or thought, there is a family there, fifteen metres away, figures through the trees. And they see me, looking up all at once to gaze in my direction. We all pause, looking, watchful. Ears twitch. Scratch of a chest. Waiting.

They move off, I move on. I’m happy. I have met the kangaroos, on their country.

Ross Colliver, Riddells Creek Landcare, ross.colliver@bigpond.com