Kangaroos

Christine is also maintaining a blog regarding her adventures in Australia.  At first glance, she is far more tech savvy then I am.  Her blog sports a nice image of Australia in the background and utilizes additional pages really well.  She also has two fun side bar features.  There is a count down clock that continually counts the seconds, minutes, hours, weeks that they have been in the field and she also has a Kangaroo count where she updates how many kangaroo sightings she has had while out and about.  I thought the roo counter was a great idea and debated hijacking her idea and adding it to my own blog.  When I mentioned it to Catherine, she laughed saying that it was going to be impossible to keep up with the roo counter as these pocketed mammals are EVERYWHERE.  I was dubious, especially after my first week in the field.  Our first field site location was at Oodnapanicken Bore.  This was a remote location over an hour in on a rough dirt track.  From there, we would hike over four hours away from any semblance of a track.  You would expect wild life to teem in such an isolated location, yet if I had had a roo counter it would have maybe topped out at 10 - 20 max.  All of these sightings were distant and fleeting.  I would whip out my camera and attempt to capture the exotic kangaroo only to have an image dominated by red earth and desert foliage.  Somewhere in the middle would be an indistinguishable, fuzzy blur that represents a fleeing wild roo that has recognized our presence from over a kilometer away and is making a fast break in the opposite direction.  Needless to say, the only kangaroos that I could get even remotely close to were in various stages of decomposition on the side of the road.  

Despite my slow start, Catherine's prediction was accurate.  This past week we spent in Flinders National Park.  The park is teaming with Winnebegoes, retired tourists, young kids on break, and crazy amounts of wildlife.  Kangaroos are so common place that I do not even get excited at a sighting.  It would be the equivalent of pulling out the camera to document every grey squirrel in Rutland.  After being in the park no more than fifteen minutes, we had seen dozens of kangaroos and multiple flocks of emus.  There were green parrots as well as colorful gallahs.  After setting up our tents, we made our way towards the information center.  Wedged between the shower house and manicured tent sites a mother kangaroo with a joey poking out of her pouch munched on some campground clover.  You will have to believe me that I was no more than ten feet away from the mother, since my camera was sitting in the car on the other side of the campround.  Grrr!!!!