I wrote a post a little while ago about Hanging Rock, focusing on the often-unacknowledged darker side of its history. I felt like that information deserved its own space, and if you missed it, you can read about it here.

If you’re planning a visit, I’d recommend calling in sick and checking out the rock on a quieter weekday. Hanging Rock’s popularity as a day-trippable destination from Melbourne only continues to increase, and on weekends it’s typically overrun with crowds of activewear-clad influencers taking selfies.

However, there’s one other species that just might outnumber Hanging Rock’s busloads of nomadic Homo sapiens…

“Who are you?”

“Oh, hi there. I’m Brodie, I’m a photographer.”

“Hey Brodie, I’m an Eastern Grey Kangaroo.”

“Yeah I know, I was actually hoping to find out a bit more about you guys.”

“Well, you’ve come to the right place! Hanging Rock is swarming with us.”

“What do you mean? You look like you’re the only one.”

“Haha! Why don’t you come over this ridge and see for yourself…”

With males growing to almost two metres tall, Eastern Grey Kangaroos are one of Australia’s largest marsupials – second only to Red Kangaroos, which have been recorded topping the two-metre mark. They’re found across almost all of eastern Australia, and can be spotted grazing in grasslands from Tassie to Northern Queensland.

They’re also incredibly fast. Kangaroos use their enormous feet and powerful tails to bound gracefully to wherever they need to go; and using this unique form of motion, they can reach speeds of up to 65km/h at full tilt.

Interestingly, a kangaroo on land will pretty much always keep both feet together, but if it happens to find itself in the water, it’s able to move its legs independently in order to paddle!

Now, I’m not going to pretend to know the first thing about what it’s like to be pregnant, but from what I hear, it’s a fairly challenging experience. So spare a thought for the Eastern Grey Kangaroo – a typical female of this species is permanently pregnant. Well, except for the day she gives birth.

Gestation only lasts for 36 days, but the mother has the remarkable ability to freeze the development of an embryo and control when it’s born – this process is known as embryonic diapause, and is common among a variety of mammals.

When she decides to give birth, the baby is about the size of a peanut and weighs less than a gram, but despite this, it manages to climb its way from the birth canal into the mother’s pouch. Just to repeat that – this tiny peanut which has barely even developed limbs isn’t given any help to get into the pouch after it’s born, it has find its own way in by climbing up the outside!

The joey remains in its mother’s pouch for nine months, before finally taking its first clumsy hops in the outside world. It permanently leaves the pouch two months later, and at this point, the mother releases the next embryo which she has been keeping dormant for several months, and begins the entire process again. The mother henceforth produces two different kinds of milk, one for the newborn, and another for the older joey, who will remain dependent on her until the 18 month mark.

This remarkable method of reproduction works incredibly efficiently, however, some would argue it perhaps works a little too efficiently…

“Hey Gazza, did you know kangaroos are crepuscular?”

“We’re farken what mate?”

“Crepuscular.”

“Don’t go using ya bloody fancy science words around me cobber.”

“It just means we’re most active at dawn and dusk.”

“Yeah no shit mate, I coulda told ya that. And so could that dickhead that just went past doing 140 in his commodore. One of those morons killed Bazza the other week.”

“I found out recently that’s one of the reasons the humans think we’re an inconvenience, and their government lets people kill us.”

“Nah come off it. You’re havin’ me on mate.”

“It’s true. In Victoria, they killed 96,000 of us last year, and they’re allowed to kill 128,000 of us this year. They call it harvesting.”

“Harvesting?! Nah get fucked. Do they reckon we’re a bloody crop?”

“Tell me about it. I get that we might damage their fences and cars sometimes, but usually that causes a lot more damage to us then it does to them. It doesn’t seem fair to kill us for it.”

“Bloody oath mate. That’s an absolute disgrace.”

The culling of kangaroos has long been a contentious issue in Victorian politics, and indeed, across the country. The debate is nuanced, with advocates arguing that culls are necessary to prevent crop destruction, competition with livestock and damage to property, and that they also contributes to the economy in the form of jobs and a supply of meat (previously, wild kangaroos could only be used for pet food, but they’ve recently been allowed onto Australian dinner plates).

However, there remains serious ethical concerns regarding culling practices. While these practices are of course designed to minimise suffering, it is impossible to eliminate suffering when hunting wild animals. For kangaroos, this suffering comes in the form of non-lethal wounds, and in particular, the abandonment of joeys. The code of practice for shooters does not have any restrictions on the killing of kangaroos with dependent young, and while it does require that their joeys be euthanised, this is much easier said than done, with most fleeing and being left as orphans.

The simple fact is that it’s entirely possible to manage kangaroo populations humanely, through improved fencing and designated protection zones. The problem of course is that these methods don’t make money – quite the opposite – because what is ethical often isn’t what is profitable. There’s a clear economic incentive to culling kangaroos, and perhaps most importantly, to desensitising the public to this process. It’s no accident that culling in Victoria is officially referred to as ‘harvesting’ – a word typically reserved for crops.

While the culling of kangaroos is probably more ethical than current factory farming practices, both still cause unnecessary suffering, and both are practices that the majority of the Australian public is being wilfully shielded from in the name of profit.

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Eastern Grey Kangaroos (Macropus giganteus), Hanging Rock, Australia