We had our first decent rains this week, and almost overnight the landscape went from dry yellow/brown to lush green shoots.
And the kangaroos are loving it! I see lots on my drive into town, but this week they’ve been much closer to the road, so I took a few photos, especially for my US friends 😉
Rhonda Bracey: At Random 
I love it! I can’t imagine driving and seeing kangaroo on the side of the road like we here in southern Illinois see white tailed deer. Thanks for the glimpse into your world!
Vickie
Looks like your kangaroos rival our deer. Do they eat everything in their path like our deer?
Echo Vickie’s comment. Had to hit the car brakes hard twice last night on the way home for deer and do a major slow down for several wild turkeys!!!! The ‘roos are so interesting…..thanks for the photos!!!!!
Roos aren’t quite as bad as deer. They don’t seem to eat garden plants, for starters. In country areas, they may go onto the roads and get hit by vehicles, but the ones in our area are the smaller Western Grey kangaroos, so while they can do quite a bit of damage, the Red Kangaroos up north and in the desert regions inflict much more vehicle damage as they are a much bigger animal.
The ones close to me are pretty good — they rarely go onto the road that goes into town. In fact, I’ve probably seen less than 10 instances of roos outside the paddocks in the 4-5 years we’ve lived here (I go into town twice a week, so that’s about 10 instances in about 450 trips!). And when they do, they are usually just nibbling at the grass on the road verges, so actually off the road though outside the fence. And yes, they are wild roos. There are a couple of families/mobs of them, and I suspect maybe 100 or so in a 3-mile section of roadside.
Beautiful scenery. I can’t help but think of the ticks you mentioned in an earlier post. LOL. In Yellowstone, we saw some moose, and the ranger told us ticks were a major problem with them, causing a lot of death. Can people hunt & eat Kangaroo? Years, and years ago, a major fast food chain (won’t name) got closed down for having Roo meat instead of beef. The weird things I think of. haha
If you have your own property and a licensed rifle, or permission from the property owner, you can hunt and kill kangaroo. Especially in the northern parts of the state, where red kangaroos are fairly prolific. However, Australia’s tight gun laws mean that very few people do this as very few people have guns. There’s no ‘hunting season’ as such.
But there’s no need to hunt them as we can buy kangaroo meat in the supermarket Seriously. Supermarkets and butchers have been selling roo meat for decades — initially just as dog food, but in the past 10 years or so as steaks. It’s very good too. Very lean, high in protein, a darker shade of red than beef, but tastes very much like beef, especially on the BBQ. And there’s no mess associated with killing and slaughtering an animal, hanging it for a while, preventing flies etc. getting on it — it’s all done at a proper abattoir, then packaged ready for consumption. Often the meat is also marinaded in the ready-to-cook packs as it can be a bit tough (there’s very little fat).