1788 NSW Port Jackson- “Kangaroos are very numerous
here.”
1790 Tench “They’re sociable animals and unite
in droves to the number of 50 or 60 together”
1802 Barrallie “The hills were covered by kangaroos”.
1813 Evans “Killed a kangaroo...there were plenty.
Kangaroos can be provided at any time”
1814 Cox “Timber thin and kangaroos a plenty”
1815 Anthill “Chased kangaroos”
1817 Oxley “Dogs killed several kangaroos”
1817 Oxley “A flock of large kangaroos. There were
plenty”
1818 Oxley “flocks of kangaroos like sheep. I do
not exaggerate when I say that some hundreds were seen in the
vicinity of this hill.”
1819 Howden “Kangaroos appeared in great numbers”
1820 Sutherland “A great number of kangaroos in
South Australia.”
1828 Sturt “There were very many kangaroos, the
intervening brush was full of kangaroos”
1833 Bennett “Kangaroos and emus were numerous”
1836 Mitchell “During the day we saw a great number
of kangaroos”
1837 Oakden “Startled a dozen kangaroos”
1938 Hawden “During the day we saw numerous kangaroos”
1938 Hawden “Kangaroos in great abundance”
1836 Hamilton “Kangaroos rats, Toolache Wallabies
were numerous ”
1840 Hall, Victoria “Game, most plentiful. Kangaroos
tail soup in abundance”
1842 Henderson SA “Numbers of kangaroos”
1842 Hawker “We saw a great number of kangaroos”
1849 Sturt “There was no want of game of the largest
kangaroos”
1882 Lyne “Kangaroos and emus! A plenty!
Historian Dr. John Auty writes:
Reference
to historical records suggest high populations of kangaroos
over much of their range. Early historical records are dotted
with references to large numbers of kangaroos. For example in
1818, John Oxley reported hundreds of kangaroos at the foot
of a hill in western New South Wales, now known as the Warrumbungles.
Gilbert, collecting in the southwest corner of Western Australia
in 1840 counted over five hundred kangaroos on the Gordon River
Plains.
On the other hand some explorers noted the absence of kangaroos.
For example the explorer Allan Cunningham in his diaries referred
to days where there was “…scarcely a trace of either
Indian or kangaroos”
In 1844, Leichardt confessed that his hopes of living off the
land in his journey from Moreton Bay to Port Essington were
dashed. He wrote: “It had now become painfully evident
to me that I had become too sanguine in my calculations as to
our finding a sufficiency of game to furnish my party with animal
food.”
The fact that explorers based their provisions on the assumption
that kangaroos would be available, and indeed found their absence
noteworthy indicates that kangaroos were generally abundant.
It is these references to the lack of kangaroos, however, that
have perpetuated the myth that kangaroos were only in small
numbers pre-European settlement.
Victoria now supports relatively few kangaroos, but in the 1830’s,
we find squatters and officials noting significant kangaroo
populations. Jamieson, the first squatter in the Mornington
Peninsula recalling 1838, states “kangaroos were running
literally in large herds.”
Sheep were run in ‘normal’ flocks of six hundred,
cattle in smaller groups, so we may interpret “large herds”
of kangaroos as being in the hundreds. Only small mobs in very
few locations remain on the peninsula today.
By the 1850’s the kangaroo had become
a scapegoat for land mismanagement. It was seen as one more
problem facing the man on the land. But unlike many other environmental
and economic problems facing these folk, the kangaroo could
be dealt with by the age old expedient method of extermination.
