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STRIIPPING THE MY
Director
and cameraman
Owen Newman
tracks the Roos in New South Wales
f your knowl- edge of kangaroos begins
and ends with Skippy, then a new BBC docu- mentary should prove an enlightening experience. For the marsupials who remain Australia’s most emblematic, indigenous species are not quite the cheerfully sociable ani- mals of popular myth.
“Kangaroos aren’t
exactly cuddly,” explains cameraman- director Owen Newman, “but of all the animals I’ve filmed they are the most unaggressive within themselves.”
Speaking in his Hampshire home, adorned with some stunning colour pho- tographs taken on his travels, Newman and his producing partner Amanda Barrett first pitched the idea of a kanga- roo documentary to the BBC four years ago. But while they were given an enthu- siastic green light from the Beeb, at the beginning of their journey to the Outback last year they found them- selves receiving stern warnings from concerned locals.
“Most Australians have really strong views about kangaroos,” Newman adds, “they either love them or totally hate them. You don’t get a middle ground. It’s quite marked, and it was clear they were nervous for us, because for one thing there are aborigines out there, as well these great red kangaroos that they call boomers.”
This image problem is something that Newman’s film, which is currently in post production, should address. The idea that kangaroos are in any way aggressive to humans is, for example, based upon a misconception.
“Around the coast there are a lot of little reserves where people have tame or orphaned kangaroos, so there are lots of little places that people can visit. There was a story about this guy who went into an enclosure with some red kangaroos, and he saw a male stand up on its back legs and scratch his chest. He thought that looked fun, so he did the same back, which the kangaroo inter- preted as a challenge. So this kangaroo came and attacked him, because he was
brought up by humans and didn’t know the difference between him and them.” By contrast kangaroos in the wild
are, Newman reports, passive and rather isolated creatures. “Having said that they’re the most friendly that I’ve worked with; they’re also one of the most shy creatures I’ve ever worked with,” continues Newman. “Kangaroos aren’t dynamic, they aren’t like lions and tigers and killer whales, but I hope that people will be quite wowed by our film, because there’s a lot of information there that they won’t know.
“For instance, I’d always been told that red kangaroos were nomadic. The thinking was that they would sweep across the plains of Australia, that they’re here one day and two weeks later they’re 500 km away. But they basically have these home ranges, and they might drift a little over a few days, as vegeta- tion changes. The home range of a kan- garoo can be anything from about two to five kilometres, which surprised me.”
Filmed over a ten month period in Sturt National Park, which is found in the north-western corner of New South Wales, Newman’s documentary follows several kangaroos through the lush green- ness of the rainy season, and the arid dry- ness of a seemingly endless summer. During his observation of them, he admits he became rather taken with marsupials in general, and kangaroos in particular. In that period he was able to observe a small part of the kangaroo life cycle.
“If the weather’s fine you’ll find you have a female with an oldish young which moves around with her for just over a year. It’s technically termed a ‘young at foot’. Then you have a Joey in the pouch, which will finally emerge at
about 150 days. And when they do come out they’re very wobbly on their legs. But while they’re in the pouch from when their eyes open at just over 100 days, they’re looking out and seeing what’s going on around them.
“When the female comes down to feed, they’ll start trying to nibble, and they sniff things. They’re not that social an animal, so if she comes near another roo, like her young at foot, the little Joey will get to know that animal. It actually sees the world from a very safe spot. It’s not going to be grabbed by eagles or chased by dingoes on its own, because it’s mother is there.
“And then when it first comes out it doesn’t stay out long, because at the first sign of danger it’s straight back into the pouch. But the female can actually have three young at the same time. She can have the young at foot, the Joey in the pouch and in her uterus there is a blastocyst, which is a fertilised egg.
“The cells have separated about a hundred times, and that’s just floating around in the uterus. After the Joey has been going in and out of the pouch for 40 days the mother stops letting it back in. Soon after that, the blastocyst is implanted onto the uterus wall, and about 33 days after that a young kanga- roo is born.”
Lit by his obvious enthusiasm, Newman’s passion for his subject is complemented by a calm and patient quality shared with wildlife cameramen the world over. A rather solitary crea- ture himself, when he is working, Newman will typically find himself and his camera in a remote part of the world, looking after focus pulling and sound recording as necessary.
Photo top: Owen Newman shooting the new BBC documentary Kangaroos in the Australian Outback
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