Saint Christopher of the Outback
Star of Kangaroo Dundee has rescued 200 orphaned joeys, now he’ll help other animals
The first time Chris (Brolga) Barnes rescued an almost dead baby kangaroo, he didn’t know what to do. He just knew he had to do something.
That was nine years ago, when he was working as a tour guide in Australia’s Northern Territory and saw an adult kangaroo lying in the middle of a highway.
She was dead, likely killed days earlier. Whimpering in her pouch was her baby, while scavenging birds circled overhead.
Barnes took the baby home, named her Palau and nursed her for months. About a year later, he released her into the wild.
That is the short version of how Barnes, the six-foot-seven man with a big smile, first became a surrogate mom, then a heartthrob worldwide.
(“Brolga” is the aboriginal word for a crane — so chosen because Barnes is so tall.)
He has since rescued more than 200 orphans, started the Kangaroo Sanctuary outside Alice Springs, and even starred in a documentary, Kangaroo Dundee. Now he is about to start work on building a hospital for wildlife — kangaroos, camels — whatever size or shape they come in.
“There isn’t one (animal hospital) for 500 kilometres and I think it will be around for a long time,” says Barnes in a phone interview Wednesday.
“The donations I have received since Kangaroo Dundee aired (on BBC), money from my autobiography and TV work . . . it’s all going to the hospital.”
It’s past midnight in Alice Springs, a city of about 25,000 surrounded by scrubland in the centre of the Australian continent.
Barnes has spent all day at the sanctuary tending to baby kangaroos, taking people on tours at sunset and
“There isn’t one (animal hospital) for 500 kilometres and I think it will be around for a long time.” CHRIS BARNES STAR OF KANGAROO DUNDEE ON BUILDING HIS WILDLIFE HOSPITAL
patrolling the perimeter so that wild dogs can’t get in.
But he doesn’t sound tired. It was “just another fun day at work,” he says.
There are currently 35 kangaroos at the sanctuary — some are babies, some as old as 10. For the babies, he creates faux pouches of canvas bags, blankets or pillow cases that resemble a kangaroo mother’s pouch. “The babies need to be kept warm so they go everywhere I go,” he says.
Usually he has a couple of them sleeping with him at night, either snuggling with him or at his feet.
The sanctuary — 90 acres of bushland — is untouched so that the kangaroos feel like they are in a natural habitat before they are released into the wild.
Of the more than 200 kangaroo orphans he has rescued, most have survived, he says.
They are orphaned either by hunt- ers in the bush or by speeding cars on roadways.
Adult kangaroos are tall and not hard to miss on the road, says Barnes. But they tend to nibble at grass on the shoulders and often dart without any warning, resulting in accidents. A baby kangaroo can survive for a few days in his mother’s pouch as long as it is warm. Kangaroos are released from the sanctuary when they are 14 months old, usually in groups so they have better odds of survival in the bush, where wild dogs roam. Except for Roger.
“He’s the alpha male, the biggest and the baddest, and he’s a kick-box- er,” says Barnes. Roger, he says, is aggressive and constantly attacks him. In the past, he has been bruised and cut up by Roger.
Barnes rescued him as a baby after his mother was struck by a car not far from Alice Springs.
He had no hair, his eyes were shut tight. “I fed him day and night, I took him to bed with me when he was a baby, he slept on my belly. . . I took him everywhere. Now, nine years later, he wants to kill me. He is like having a delinquent son.”
Barnes recently had knee surgery. It was partly because of Roger, he says, laughing.