Orphaned kangaroo joeys sit in cloth pouches, hung in the living room. More than a dozen of the marsupials snuggled into fabric pouches hung in the couple's living room, like stockings on Christmas Eve.
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Gary Wilson stands outside his home. Full-grown kangaroos and other wildlife that had left their care long ago also came back to the house in search of refuge as the flames approached.
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Wilson and Willis sit in their living room. Even as a fierce bushfire bore down on the rural Australian community of Wytaliba, Gary Wilson and his partner Julie Willis decided not to flee their timber home - they had a house full of orphaned baby kangaroos to protect.
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Willis feeds orphaned kangaroo joeys. "We had way too many animals in the house and around the house so we really couldn't go ... we decided we were going to stay and fight," said Wilson, at the couple's off-the-grid home, now surrounded by scorched earth and burnt-out vehicles.
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Willis feeds orphaned kangaroo joeys. "At three o'clock it was a beautiful summer's day, by four o'clock it was midnight," Wilson said. "You couldn't see any more than 20 yards and then the firestorm came through and pretty much burned everything." Wilson and Willis defended their home for at least 14 hours with fire extinguishers, water pumps and a sprinkler system on the roof that doused burning embers falling from the sky.
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Wilson and Willis collect sand bags used to protect homes from the rain. Good preparation and more than an ounce of luck meant the couple's cypress-pine home still stands - and the motherless joeys survived. The November 8 fire that swept through the small Wytaliba community, which was originally set up as a commune in the 1970s, killed two of Wilson's neighbours.
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Wilson and Willis have lunch at their home. "It was a horrible thing ... the whole bush has been burnt. It's been vaporised - it's Vietnam is what it looks like," Wilson said as infant kangaroos ate grain from a trough fashioned from a car tyre and lined up two-by-two to be bottle-fed special milk.
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Willis feeds orphaned kangaroo joeys. Willis said she had never seen fires so fierce, and that most animals, such as possums, gliders, echidnas, lizards and even many birds were not fast enough to escape the flames.
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"It's not until after the fires when it really hits you how close you were to dying but at the time you are too busy trying to put the fire out," she said. Above: Willis carries an orphaned kangaroo joey in her living room.
Image Credit: REUTERS
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The remains of a burnt down house, destroyed during the bushfire season is pictured in the community of Wytaliba. Australia's prolonged bushfire season has killed 33 people and an estimated 1 billion native animals since September. About 2,500 homes have been destroyed and more than 11.7 million hectares (28.9 million acres) of tinder-dry bushland have been razed.
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A kangaroos stand amongst the remains of burnt trees. The number of boarders at the Wytaliba home, which has been a sanctuary for wildlife for 25 years, is ballooning as the fallout from the fires continues with burns, scarce food and ash-tainted water still devastating local wildlife.
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While Wilson and Willis usually care for joeys rescued after their mothers are struck by vehicles, they are now hosting an increasing number of fire orphans.
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An orphaned kangaroo joey at Wilson's home. Willis said the joeys, which are fed a special milk formula every two to four hours just like their human counterparts, will eventually be released back into the wild.
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Willis feeds orphaned kangaroos. "We didn't have children ourselves; this is what we spend our time doing,' she said, as she gently stroked a joey on her lap while another nudged her feet. "We think it's worthy - a worthy cause - looking after our babies no matter what they are, whether they are kangaroos, echidnas or wombats."
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An orphaned kangaroo joey plays with Wilson.
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