The Roo Dog

The Kangaroo dog is unique to Australia. It's a mystery dog with a big story. Born in the early Sydney colony, this deerhound-greyhound mongrel dog was bred to hunt and kill kangaroos. The kangaroo dog was there at key moments in Australia's colonial past - from hunting dog that fed the colony, to bushrangers best mate - to battle dog in the Frontier wars, and family member. The kangaroo dog has seen a lot. What happens when we see history through a dog's eyes?

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:37Speaker 02

  Hello, Hilary Harper stepping in to rewind today to bring you the story of an Australian dog that changed history. But this dog is one you've probably never heard of. The origins of the kangaroo dog, or roo dog, begin at Sydney Cove in 1788, and the canine is uncannily linked to Australia's colonial history. Today, producer Jane Curtis tells the story of the kangaroo dog. And just a brief warning for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people listening, this programme has the voices of people who've died and descriptions of colonial violence.

• 1:12Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm Jane Curtis. And I bet you're thinking, what is a kangaroo dog?

• 1:19Speaker 04

  They sleep all the time.

• 1:21Speaker 05

  16 hours a day.

• 1:22Speaker 04

  They just sleep.

• 1:23Speaker 05

  Very lean on politeness. Not the kind of dog that you sit there and go, oh, you would, you would, you would. You don't do that with a kangaroo dog. And the...

• 1:32Speaker 04

  And they're sooks as well.

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  They are sooks. But 16 hours a day, they are sleepers. And then the bit where they are active is just like amazing.

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  When they were coming past me, it was like, boom, boom, boom. They're really full on, yeah.

• 1:54Speaker 05

  My name is Julie Dowling. I'm a fine artist, portrait painter, and I do history paintings as well.

• 2:03Speaker 04

  Yep, I'm Dr Carol Dowling, an academic in Aboriginal studies. This is Carol speaking, because we are twins, identical twins.

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  Carol and Julie Dowling are First Nations women of Badi Mia country in Midwest Western Australia.

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  Badi Mia country is semi-desert, and in spring, it's a carpet of West Australian wildflowers. Before I'd met Carol and Julie, I'd never heard of this sucky, sleepy, super-fast dog, and maybe you haven't either. We'll get to why that is, and how the kangaroo dog got its name. But to picture the dog in your head, imagine a beefed-up greyhound, a big, athletic dog. These days, the kangaroo dog is pretty rare. Some people claim they've even died out, but have they?

• 3:03Speaker 06

  Oh, hello, mate. Elsa! Good girl.

• 3:10Speaker 03

  Maybe not. There was one place I found a lot of these dogs, 37,000 of them, references, that is, in Trove, the online archive of old Australian newspapers and books. As a dog lover, I was hooked, and as a history lover, it mattered, because history can be really people-centric. It's all about us. The more I dug, the more I found the kangaroo dog at key moments in our colonial history. In fact, the kangaroo dog was part of the colonisation process.

• 3:50Speaker 03

  But it also played a role in the resistance to colonisation as well. And sometimes it was just on the sofa, asleep. Let's meet our first kangaroo dog and hear more from twin sisters Julie and Carol Dowling. We're in Perth, tucked inside Julie's art studio, an old mining shed that sits in her backyard.

• 4:16Speaker 04

  We were brought up with a story about particular dogs in our family that had sort of like a legendary status. Yeah. Julie's painted one particular one called Tiger Moth. And he was sort of like a dappled colour, wasn't he? Yeah. A brindle colour. And Tiger Moth was one hell of a roo dog. Our aunty Liz, when she was growing up there with granny, that dog helped her learn to walk.

• 4:39Speaker 07

  I'm Liz Dowling, or Aunty Liz. I was only a baby at the time and there was this big dog. Its fur was like a tiger's fur and I knew that by holding on to its neck, I could get around. That dog was a real solid dog, a friendly dog, a big dog.

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  Tiger Moth died before Carol and Julie were born, but they were brought up with the stories of kangaroo dogs.

• 5:10Speaker 04

  You know, it's almost like that dog was a part of our life. Those oral histories are very powerful about that. We have a long line of storytellers and our mum brought us up talking about her grandmother and the life that they lived up in a small town called Karoo.

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  Karoo is on Newood country, a tiny town on the train line, about three hours north of Perth.

• 5:34Speaker 04

  She was known as granny, so that's our great-grandmother. But she used to do quite regular hunting with the kangaroo dogs.

• 5:44Speaker 04

  Granny was forever making kangaroo skin pelts and making like blankets out of the kangaroo and them having kangaroo meat all the time.

• 5:55Speaker 03

  Yep, kangaroo dogs got their name because they chase and kill kangaroos.

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  Forever when you're yarring to noongas or yamagis or whatever, the first thing they say to each other is you got any meat? To actually have a good source of protein is the most important thing. It's always about meat.

• 6:15Speaker 03

  Kangaroo is one of the healthiest meats there is, and kangaroos have been hopping all over Australia for at least 2 million years. They've been sustainably managed and hunted by First Nations peoples with weapons, nets, dingoes and fire. Here's Carol Dowling.

• 6:35Speaker 04

  In my country, in Badimia country, the use of fire was very important to seasonally burn off the bush and force kangaroos down to a certain exit point. It took a long time to build up a good population of kangaroos. They often wouldn't touch the older males or the breeding females. A lot of the techniques for hunting were quite inspired by a real close understanding of country.

• 7:04Speaker 03

  So what happens when the kangaroo is hunted by people and dogs with no knowledge of or connection to country? To find out, let's leave Badimia country in the west and go to the east coast, to Gadigal country, and the birth of the first kangaroo dog.

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  It's 1788. The lives of First Nations people are about to change forever.

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  Over 1,000 British soldiers and convicts are setting up camp at Warung, Sydney Cove.

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  They unload animals off the ships of the First Fleet: cows, horses, sheep and dogs, including greyhounds, a traditional British hunting dog brought to Australia on the orders of Governor Phillip.

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  Governor Phillip was told that he would need greyhounds if he wanted to catch kangaroos. That's why they were brought.

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  That's dog historian Guy Hall. He grew up hearing the stories of his dad's kangaroo dogs.

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  In the first few years of the colony at Sydney Cove, the crops failed and so the British hunt kangaroos.

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  They hunt them with muskets that rarely hit their targets, and with the governor's greyhounds.

• 8:31Speaker 05

  They tried to ambush kangaroos and hunt kangaroos, but kangaroos are very wary. And they've been hunted for 60,000 years by people, so they know that people are trouble, and they know that dogs are trouble.

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  Turns out that these greyhounds, bred to kill rabbits and foxes, just weren't cut out for the job of tackling and killing a kangaroo.

• 8:59Speaker 05

  Kangaroos are really dangerous. They can grab a dog. They can fight them savagely.

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  They can use their enormous nails to disembowel them.

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  They can get into water.

• 9:14Speaker 05

  They can grab dogs. They can stand on them and drown them.

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  And they've had thousands of years' practice doing this with dingoes.

• 9:28Speaker 05

  The colonists soon realised that they needed a harder dog. So they got hold of Scottish deerhounds and crossed those with greyhounds, which is the animal that we knew then as the kangaroo dog.

• 9:45Speaker 03

  So sometime in the first 15 years of the Sydney colony, the first kangaroo dog puppy was born. We'll call her Speedy, after a real kangaroo dog of the time. Speedy, the furry, muscly deerhound greyhound cross, looked quite distinctive.

• 10:13Speaker 05

  Look, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I know people who are very close to me have seen pictures of them and thought, "That's the ugliest dog I've ever seen in my life."

• 10:23Speaker 03

  They weren't bred to be pretty, they were bred to do a job. And they're about as pretty as a rifle.

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  Luckily for kangaroo dog Speedy, looks didn't count. For a while, they became the most valuable commodity in the colony because that's what kept everyone in their protein, so they were a pretty important dog. Thanks to the skills of Speedy and other kangaroo dogs, kangaroo meat was a regular colonial dish, cooked in soup, stews, or the famous kangaroo steamer.

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  Cut the meat off the hindquarters, being careful to remove all the sinews, chop it very fine, take the same quantity of smoked bacon fat.

• 11:10Speaker 03

  With kangaroo meat on the menu, British colonists bought and sold hundreds of dogs. Sydney Gazette, November 3rd, 1805. "Wanted to purchase for a gentleman at a distant settlement. A good kangaroo dog that must be warranted to kill and show. A liberal price will be given." As the colonists expanded from Sydney Cove onto Darug country, they violently pushed through Aboriginal resistance.

• 11:37Speaker 03

  Yet kangaroo hunting was one thing the newcomers and First Nations peoples sometimes did together. Darug warriors carrying wumeras, spears, and axes hunted alongside white bushmen with their, quote, "savage muscular dogs." Soon Darug people had kangaroo dogs of their own.

• 12:02Speaker 03

  At Shaws Creek Aboriginal Place at Yarramundi on Darug country, there's a large rock engraving of a kangaroo hunt with an engraving of a dog, described by some historians as a kangaroo dog. So they'd learnt in that 15 years in Sydney, the significance of the hunting dogs in the Australian environment, the kangaroo.

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  Dog, you know, the local breed.

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  And that's what was brought to Tasmania in 1803.

• 12:34Speaker 03

  James Boyce is a historian based in Hobart. And his interests are pretty wide. In his books, he's taken on The Pokies, Original Sin, and the history of Van Diemen's Land, Tasmania.

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  In 1803, the British anchored their boats in the Derwent River in modern day Hobart. A puppy, named Bosun, and other kangaroo dogs scramble off the boat. The kangaroo dog has arrived in Tasmania.

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  Well, it would have been like paradise. Can you imagine?

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  All the waterways, that amazing Kunani Mountain. And the sounds, they say, the sounds of the whales.

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  You're hearing the whales all the time in the Derwent, making whale songs. Imagine that.

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  It was magical and would have been just all stories. So many stories of everything having meaning.

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  And then these tall ships arrive.

• 13:42Speaker 06

  My name is Julie Gough. I'm an artist and also writer, researcher and curator at the Tasmania Museum and Art Gallery. I'm also a Trolawalwe woman.

• 13:55Speaker 05

  These Palawa managed lands were, to the English, consistently described like a gentleman's park. There's 200 miles of grassland stretching to their north. And teeming with wallaby and what's still called forest of kangaroo here in Tasmania, the eastern grey and the emu.

• 14:17Speaker 03

  Basically, Tasmania was kangaroo paradise. And when Bosun and his roo dog mates arrive in the early 1800s, this paradise is about to end. The dingo, the kangaroo's only predator on the mainland besides humans, had never made it to the island of Tasmania.

• 14:41Speaker 05

  These animals are not adapted to the dog. The animals had never seen anything like it.

• 14:47Speaker 03

  So kangaroos on mainland Australia had defended themselves against dingos for thousands of years. But kangaroos in Tasmania didn't know what hit them.

• 15:01Speaker 05

  There's no more supply ships coming in. Everyone sort of forgets about this settlement and it's basically left to fend for itself. And so they just switched to kangaroo ration. Suddenly they're eating fresh meat every day, supplemented by the shellfish, which were everywhere to be found. And they're eating a diet quite similar to the indigenous people of the island. And people's health becomes dramatically improved.

• 15:28Speaker 03

  The Hobart Government Store buys huge amounts of kangaroo meat to feed the colony. Around one tonne of kangaroo a week is what the town surveyor George Harris told his mother in a letter in 1805.

• 15:44Speaker 04

  My pack of kangaroo dogs are as good as any in the whole country. There's lager, weasel, lion, Bosun and Brindle. And with those dogs, I scarcely ever have to send out for meat. My two huntsmen can bring me three, four, five, even eight kangaroo a day.

• 16:04Speaker 03

  And it wasn't the military officers or government officials like Harris doing the dirty work of hunting with kangaroo dogs. It was the convicts assigned to them. A perfect side hustle for the gentry.

• 16:18Speaker 05

  Reverend Robert Notwood was one of the officers and he was one of the ones supplying the government store, making more money out of selling kangaroo to the government than his own wage. Whole economy is centred on the kangaroo.

• 16:32Speaker 03

  Meanwhile, the intensive hunting of kangaroo with the newly introduced dogs is having an impact on the First Nations people.

• 16:41Speaker 06

  And since 1803, when the British raised their flag at what was termed Riston Cove, there'd been clear attempts to annihilate Aboriginal peoples.

• 16:51Speaker 05

  And there was soon also resistance pushed back by local Palawa people, obviously.

• 16:59Speaker 03

  Despite this resistance, the colonists and their kangaroo dogs go deeper into those beautiful Palawa-managed grasslands to hunt.

• 17:09Speaker 05

  We soon see these convicts going bush, often without a gun, just with a dog.

• 17:16Speaker 03

  The kangaroo dog Bosun was one of these dogs. Bosun lived with a convict kangaroo hunter in the bush.

• 17:28Speaker 05

  Within 18 months of first settlement, we have British convicts living year-round in the Tasmanian bush. Now, this is one of the fastest adaptations to a colonised land. So they were dressing themselves in kangaroo skins, learning to make huts that they saw all around them. They were living semi-nomadic lives. Of course, what was in it for them was freedom, and the key was the dog.

• 17:53Speaker 03

  These convicts were Australia's first bush rangers. But not the Ned Kelly kind, not yet.

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  And it was kangaroo dogs like Bosun that made it possible for Tasmanian convicts to range the bush.

• 18:10Speaker 05

  They were called bush rangers, but they weren't bush rangers in the sense we understand it, like armed outlaws. They were accepted by the state.

• 18:17Speaker 03

  As time went on, bush rangers were no longer accepted by the state. Less like convicts gone wild, more like Ned Kelly. Armed outlaw and one of Australia's most famous bush rangers, Michael Howe, was captured in 1818. When he faced his death, it was said there were two things he'd miss.

• 18:40Speaker 05

  One is the loss of his Aboriginal partner. The other is the loss of his kangaroo. Dog Bosun.

• 18:50Speaker 03

  Bosun missed his bushranger master too. But a good kangaroo dog was too valuable to let mope around. Bosun was traded for kangaroo skins with First Nations people. And this trade had been happening since the early days of the Tasmanian colony.

• 19:09Speaker 05

  There wasn't a lot that Aboriginal people initially wanted for British society. But the dog was a different matter.

• 19:15Speaker 06

  Pretty early on, they were incorporated and not just kangaroo dogs because a lot of colonists had small terriers.

• 19:22Speaker 03

  A quick note here. Early on, as Julie Goff says, First Nations people took in kangaroo dogs and other kinds of dogs that the colonists owned. And these dogs bred. So the original strict deerhound greyhound mix from Sydney Cove changed over time in Tasmania and on the mainland. But they were still called kangaroo dogs.

• 19:45Speaker 06

  The kangaroo dog, it provided companionship. It was an early warning system of colonists encroaching upon us. It provided warmth. It became a family member.

• 19:57Speaker 05

  So the dog was traded, supplied, puppies were supplied. The dog spreads right across the island.

• 20:05Speaker 06

  The advantages of the dog were quickly understood. And to have such a, you know, completely alien being be a quickly incorporated into your life and family life. These glimpses of how much we did equip ourselves, our ancestors to survive and change, such as incorporating the dog into everyday life, shows that we were flexible, adaptable, resilient people.

• 20:30Speaker 05

  The kangaroo dog is central to this whole adaptation on both sides of the frontier, this whole encounter.

• 20:39Speaker 03

  Tasmanian Aboriginal people adapted to the new dog. But the Tasmanian environment did not.

• 20:47Speaker 05

  Sadly, the Tasmanian emu is extinct and the Forrester kangaroo, the eastern grey.

• 20:53Speaker 05

  Covering now, but it also was threatened with extinction, again by the effectiveness of these dogs.

• 20:59Speaker 03

  The Tasmanian emu, smaller and darker than the Australian mainland emu, became extinct in 60 years, with the most likely cause being overhunting.

• 21:10Speaker 05

  In the early decades of the British invasion, the introduction of the dog is impossible to separate from the introduction of white people.

• 21:25Speaker 03

  By the 1820s in Tasmania, and on the east coast of Australia by the 1830s, British settlers are now taking over Aboriginal land to farm food, cattle and sheep.

• 21:40Speaker 03

  Dog historian Guy Hull.

• 21:42Speaker 05

  Kangaroo dogs went with people, they lived with people. In every little cabin or slab of hut, or the settlers made as they were spreading out throughout the countryside. They took kangaroo dogs with them because that was their ticket to survival, because what small stock they took had to be shepherded and protected. Free settlers, who were given large land grants, they're wanting to keep out everybody else. This is my land. One of the issues people had with kangaroos, and why the reason they kept kangaroo dogs, is because kangaroos eat the same thing that sheep eat, and that's grass. So they were seen as being competitors. Australian pastoralism just took war to everything, to everything.

• 22:28Speaker 03

  Australian pastoralism did take war to everything and everyone that stood in its way.

• 22:36Speaker 03

  Here's First Nations academic Carol Dowling, who you heard from earlier.

• 22:40Speaker 04

  All I can speak is from the swan colony in Perth, and also up in our country, but in my country, in the central west, around the Murchison. Colonists, when they first came in contact with our people, we often would allow them to actually have a chance to have kangaroo or to hunt kangaroo. The idea of someone going hungry was unheard of. But unfortunately, as time wore on, those engagements, they quickly went sour. Mainly because of our values within the community, within First Nations community, was one of reciprocity. You know, what are you going to give back to us in kind?

• 23:25Speaker 04

  Emus and kangaroos were considered open game for the colonists that came into our country. But there was no consideration that First Nations peoples could actually spear a sheep, a steer, to actually recompense for the loss of game in country, claimed as reciprocal food source. And this was often met with a quite a lot of retaliation by the colonists. So the idea of reciprocity was an issue in that early engagement. A lack of understanding on both parts, but particularly from the colonists

• 24:06Speaker 04

  who viewed their conquering of country tantamount to taking whatever resources that was located on that country.

• 24:15Speaker 03

  When Aboriginal people killed cattle or sheep, just as the colonists killed kangaroo, the British often retaliated violently.

• 24:24Speaker 04

  It wasn't unheard of for whole groups of people being massacred or shot because of them taking sheep and livestock.

• 24:34Speaker 03

  It's one part of the 140 years of conflict and resistance between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Australia called the frontier wars. And in these wars, the kangaroo dog's role changed to battle dog.

• 24:53Speaker 04

  So the British techniques, I mean it's really hard to talk about this stuff.

• 25:00Speaker 04

  They learned that the most effective way, and as we find in Tasmania and in New South Wales, and then taken into other parts of the continent, is to surround Aboriginal campfires at night.

• 25:14Speaker 06

  Our ancestors were attacked while sleeping at 3am. There was this sort of set time when colonists thought, "Everyone's asleep."

• 25:22Speaker 04

  Position yourselves. And then as dawn breaks, you just open volleys of musket fire and it's a slaughter.

• 25:31Speaker 06

  Rage an Aboriginal camp and kill everyone.

• 25:34Speaker 04

  But the early warning system, so are the dogs. The dogs start to bark, you know, we hear often accounts of that. And then, you know, someone's out there, something's out there. So they become really key to managing this threat. But also their capacity to catch food on the go when you're conducting a sort of guerrilla warfare and you're needing to move all the time.

• 26:01Speaker 06

  The kangaroo dog was a partner in the hunt for bringing down the kangaroo and the wallaby. So it made life more economically possible when our numbers were so reduced. It had to almost replace our missing, our missing people.

• 26:20Speaker 03

  Newspapers also report kangaroo dogs taking on a more active role in the conflict.

• 26:26Speaker 06

  There's another, another story on, in the Hobart Town Gazette.

• 26:30Speaker 00

  October 29th, 1831.

• 26:32Speaker 06

  Another attack by the natives.

• 26:34Speaker 00

  Upwards of 150 natives armed with spears and waddies, and attended with nearly 50 fine kangaroo dogs, again surrounded the house of Mr Hobbs.

• 26:43Speaker 06

  And you wonder too about what level of protection or warning they provided colonists.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  In Queensland, kangaroo dogs are kept by some police, including the notorious native police.

• 27:04Speaker 03

  The frontier wars end in the 1930s. A legacy of the land grab left roo dogs right across Australia, but mainly out bush, in country towns, remote communities and outback stations. And people still used them to hunt. We all had our own kangaroo dog. I had mine and Charlie had his and Earl had his. And we used to go out hunting, hunting hares. In these archival interviews, Sir John Kramer, who you just heard, and First Nations man Bill Gray, both of rural New South Wales, kept kangaroo dogs.

• 27:44Speaker 05

  What else do you do out there? Oh, kangaroo, emu, porcupine. Just go out of town and shoot them? Yeah, you don't have to go, you know, five mile out of town to get a feed of wild meat. Most of the kangaroo. Just run down dogs or shoot them? Yeah, no dogs. We used to have the dogs. And the kangaroo dogs would be trotting along in the shade of the buggy or the sulking. And me and Yoni, we'd run along with the dogs.

• 28:10Speaker 04

  But, you know, every decade that went by, they became less and less popular. So, you know, weapons became more accurate. And then rifles could shoot quite long distances. And, you know, had the power to knock a kangaroo over. Well, they made the kangaroo dog redundant overnight.

• 28:30Speaker 06

  I wonder about, you know, where are all the descendants of those dogs? That kind of helped us survive. Are they with colonists now again? Are they back with, any families, Aboriginal people with the descendants of those dogs?

• 28:44Speaker 03

  The answers to Julie Gough's questions are yes and yes. Kangaroo dogs are still with us today. They're in the bush blocks of Tasmania, in Western Australia, where they've probably got some dingo in them. They're all over, including Bensdale in regional Victoria, which is our last stop.

• 29:06Speaker 04

  I've had this one line of dogs for 50 years, which makes me sound a little bit oldish, but I'm not. I'm just a young bloke.

• 29:13Speaker 03

  This is Lex Raymond, a pastor of his local church and the only kangaroo dog breeder in Australia, it seems.

• 29:21Speaker 04

  Come and meet some dogs. So have you actually seen a kangaroo dog before?

• 29:26Speaker 03

  Never.

• 29:27Speaker 04

  Never, wow.

• 29:28Speaker 03

  I've only seen them in photos and historical paintings.

• 29:32Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 29:33Speaker 03

  But I've never seen one in real life.

• 29:35Speaker 04

  Well, they are a super friendly dog. Everyone says to you their dogs are wonderful, it's not true. And it's probably the temperament of these dogs that is the most endearing quality of them. This is Willow, eh? And she's just a real little sook and a softie, eh?

• 29:52Speaker 06

  Beautiful, come here. Here, Elsa.

• 29:55Speaker 04

  Come here, she's an absolute sweetie, very obedient. Here, Elsa. You can see in that dog, she's almost like a smile and the kind eyes, eh?

• 30:09Speaker 04

  She's a good girl.

• 30:10Speaker 03

  I asked Lex if he could remember the names of the dogs that he's bred over the past 50 years.

• 30:17Speaker 04

  What you're asking for, I could get my nine-year-old granddaughter to tell you. Because she is an expert on all my dogs.

• 30:25Speaker 06

  So the first dog he ever had was Scout.

• 30:29Speaker 04

  Scout.

• 30:30Speaker 06

  And he loved him lots, lots, lots, lots, lots, lots, lots.

• 30:35Speaker 04

  She would tell you about Shiloh and Chick and all these dogs.

• 30:39Speaker 06

  Shiloh, Chick.

• 30:40Speaker 04

  And Rain, in fact, I have got dogs today that carry the names of those original dogs. Because of that emotional connection. I've got a pup here called Rain, because I had a Rain 45 years ago. I have a Bonnie today, because I had a Bonnie 50 years ago.

• 30:56Speaker 06

  Oh, hello mate. Elsa. Good girl. So this is Elsa, she's, you can't see her, but she's very calm.

• 31:06Speaker 04

  My granddaughter names my dogs based on her history she carries that I've imparted to her.

• 31:14Speaker 03

  On Lex's farm, I got to meet real kangaroo dogs. Willow, Fagan and Elsa, the great, great, great, great, great, great, great granddaughter of Bosun, the bushranger's dog.

• 31:27Speaker 03

  While the history of kangaroo dogs can make it sound like they're ferocious, bloodthirsty beasts, they're just not. And they're not ugly either, they're really beautiful dogs.

• 31:41Speaker 06

  Well, for... Ages, I was very scared of them because they're so big. But, once you get used to them, they're very nice and calm.

• 31:51Speaker 04

  I think anybody that invests a partnership with a dog, whether that's just living with a dog in your home. Dogs play a remarkable role in human life.

• 32:05Speaker 04

  All dogs that we have are bred bred for a purpose. And the kangaroo dog's purpose has evolved as our world has changed. It's kept evolving.

• 32:22Speaker 04

  The kangaroo dog is actually quite an honoured animal within our families, particularly in smaller country towns, especially in the South West and up in the wheat belt. We do know that a lot of people will go out hunting with their dogs still. But generally, most of them are couch potatoes, these dogs. They're very pampered and very much loved by their families.

• 32:44Speaker 06

  We've got a lot, I think, to thank for those creatures joining us.

• 32:52Speaker 06

  The kangaroo dog is, for me, emblematic of our people's survival against the odds and being able to use something as an ally that had come from so far away. And that when it was with us and our ancestors, I mean, survival was the task at hand and it did work and we are still here. And we partly have that dog to thank for that.

• 33:16Speaker 03

  So, the kangaroo dog was born of colonisation and the Australian environment. Born on country, from hunting dog to bushrangers' best mate, to battle dog and family member of black and white Australians.

• 33:36Speaker 03

  The kangaroo dog's seen a lot. And by seeing the past through a dog's eyes, maybe we can face our history together.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  Kangaroo Dog was produced by Jane Curtis. The sound engineer was John Jacobs.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  This has been a Rewind production for ABC Radio National, where you'll catch me, Hilary Harper, most of the week. Look forward to your company.

• 34:37Speaker 00

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