Kangaroo Kick boxing

Recently the boys and I went on a week long camping trip to the Flinders rangers with two other Homeschooling families.

I checked on the web before we left and set out with an optimistic goal of getting there within 4 hours. It was 10 am when we finally scampered out the door and I was looking forward to an easy drive, arriving in plenty of time to unpack our gear. Well instead of arriving at 2 as we had anticipated, we finally arrived (having gone the wrong way) at 4:30 and just got our tent up before the sun went down.

The camp site was right next to a large shallow dry creek, about 100m across, and full of old gum trees that had obviously been swept down stream in the last flood... which, from the under growth coming up in the creek bed, had been several years before. All this made for an incredible play space for our 9 boys. While we mothers cooked and chatted and laughed the boys raced around making up all manner of games and adventure quests in and on these falled trees.

Mostly our days were spent hiking, and our youngest member, Anthony - who is only 4, valiantly climbed the Rawsley Bluff trail with the rest of the kids. A 13km round trip up the side of a cliff. It was quite harrowing and while the sense of achievement was enjoyable, once back in the carpark, all the boys decided that is was not something they ever wanted to repeat! (However hiking must be a bit like childbirth because a few days later they were talking about doing the Rawsley Bluff next time they came to Wilpena Pound - LOL).

Our campsite was full of wildlife. Kangaroo's came in to our site for a pat and a feed, and one of the female Kangaroo's even allowed me to open her pouch so we could all see the furless joey growing in there. Luke of course grabbed his camera for a photo (which is posted on my facebook)

There were emu's and wild goats and we even saw a torquise, iridescent lizard sunbaking on a rock, during one of our walks. I didnt know that such a creature existed in Australia, so now we are trying to find out what type of lizard is was.

As wonderful as all this wildlife was, we did have a few kangaroo's that were more intent on our food than our company and on the first night I had a visitor in my tent in the wee-hours. I woke up to the sound of it rummaging around and climbed out through the zipper of our sleeping section to confront this univited guest.

Unfortunately, I have never met an aggressive kangaroo before and so I thought that a simple shoo-ing of him out of the tent would be sufficient to scare him off. This was not the case for a few reasons.

You see, firstly I was crouched down (having just wormed my way out through the zipper) when I announced my desire for him to vacate the premises and obviously he did not see me as any type of threat. Secondly he had somehow wriggle his way under the side of the fly in order to enter the tent and was in fact trapped with no immediate escape.

All this being the case our friendly kangaroo turned to see me crouching next to him, growling about his need to exit and he decided that he was up to the challenge. Just as I was rising to stand he reared onto his tail and proceeded to kick me (quite hard I might add!!) with both his feet, over and over and over again. I fell backwards onto the tent, where Luke was sleeping, collapsing that side of the contruction and sitting on Lukes feet. I turned my body away from the blows that were now coming at my ribs and thighs.

I remember thinking "Im down for the count man!! You can stop punching" but as my friend pointed out the next day - throught peels of histerical laughter - "Kangaroo's dont follow the boxing rules we humans have". I wasnt sure that he was going to stop without maming me and I called out to the boys for help... to no avail in their sleepy haze they both just kind of grunted at me (professing, the next morning, that they didnt actually realise what was going on)

Well eventually my fury friend decided that I had obviously gotten the message and returned to the box of food. By this stage I was less gun-hoe than I was at the beginning of our introduction, and I quietly leant forward to undo the zipper on the fly, thus allowing our visitor an exit point. I then stood up to my full height and holding the door open said in a pleading voice "Shoo, Shoo, out you go kangaroo".

Well his first reaction was to turn and grunt at me with the same aggrivation he had shown in our original encounter. But now that I was standing he gazed up at my full height and then quickly looked around for an exit, before bounding out. Phew!!

I rubbed some aloe vera on a wound that I had on my leg, and thanked God that I was up to date with my tetnus shots, before grabbing all the food boxes and loading them into the car.

The next morning I had a lovely bruise to show off in accompaniment to my story, and my girlfriends decided that it was one of the best stories they had heard in a long time - and one that must be repeated at every homeschool camp there after (along with the other wonderful tales that have been gathered over our years homeschooling adventures!!).