This morning on my climb up to the firetower, a kangaroo stopped me on the stairs.
We watched each other. Both of us were quite still, me with my karri hazel stick and backpack and tiger snake jitters, he with an interrupted mouthful of grass.
I'd just climbed the two steel-runged ladders so I wondered how this old boy made it to this part of the mountain. It's sheer granite cliffs all around and here he is! Maybe he climbed up the eastern side. Eventually, with me having a chat with him about how I had to start work in about four minutes time, the boomer let me pass and ambled onto mossy granite to the east of the stairs. The granite incline was at least 45 but he stayed there to watch me.
It's such an odd sense to see an animal as big as me up here, but the roos are more curious than scared on the mountain, when I see them on the lower sections. Several generations have lived here without being hunted and dogs have been banned from this area for decades. Dingos are pretty much extinct in these parts too, so there are no apex predators for kangaroos to worry about.
On that note, I've been reading Charlotte McConaghy's 'Once There were Wolves', a novel about the reintroduction of wolves into Scotland.
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