Molly the wombat and Gus the kangaroo

On the way to Phillip Island on Monday, we stopped at Maru Wildlife and Fauna Park - a sanctuary for rescued animals. I made friends with Molly the wombat, who was orphaned in a road accident, rescued from her dead mother's pouch. Apparently marsupial infants often do survive accidents in this way. At one time they would have been left to die, but now they are rescued and nurtured by various voluntary organisations and trusts.

Wombats are amazingly compact little animals, with a hard plate of bone across their haunches which protects them from predators. Lee, the Duck Truck tour guide, described how a wombat will crawl into a hole to escape a predator, leaving just its armour-plated rear end sticking out. Another tactic they use apparently is to crawl into a hole or burrow and flatten themselves against the ground; the unwary predator follows the wombat in and gets on top of it, intending to attack, at which point the wombat stands up and crushes its opponent against the top of the burrow. A car which tangles with a wombat sustains a lot of damage (though not as much as the wombat of course).

At Maru we went into the kangaroo and wallaby enclosures and hand fed them with some dried grasses and grains (purchased from the store for 50c a bowl). I was besieged by Gus, a large reddish-brown kangaroo from Kangaroo Island in Southern Australia. He was larger and heavier than the Eastern Greys, coming up to my shoulder or thereabouts when standing up on his hind legs, and very strong and determined; I've still got the scratches on my arm 4 days later. Whenever I tried to move away, Gus came after me, nose in the air and sniffing noisily after the scent of the food. In the end, Lee enticed him away so that I could feed the other kangaroos. I tried to feed some of the smaller ones that were quietly grazing, but he bigger ones immediately butted in and pushed them away.

Kangaroos don't much like having their ears touched, but they do like having their chests tickled.

I also had a go at hand-feeding the emus. They stab at your hand quite aggressively. In fact, they aren't very lovable at all!

We went round the park in a group initially, but then had a spare 10 minutes or so at the end to do what we liked. I went back to see Molly the wombat. She loved having her back scratched and kept rolling over then to have her tummy tickled, but also kept trying to nip me when I obliged. Wombats are renowned for being grumpy and aggressive. When I turned to leave Molly, she started pacing up and down against the fence of her pen in that sad way that bored, caged animals have.