More of the past. Jojo comes to stay.

Michelle feeding Jojo

About 18 months old. I'm a big girl now.

1986, the drought continued, outside work was scarce, and the bank manager was getting edgy about the overdraft. So when the going gets tough - the tough go roo shooting.

Roo shooting is a hard, soul destroying way to make a few quid, out all night shooting roos, skin them, trim, salt and tag the skins in the morning and then out again another night.

On one of these nocturnal forays Michelle rescued a joey, small hairless scrap of an animal a few inches long. I have no idea what was special about this one; I routinely dispatched a few joeys every night that we went shooting, but I knew better than to interfere. Sometimes a woman just has to do what woman has to do! She christened the joey “Jojo” and shooting was finished for the night as we returned home to try to keep this animal alive.

Personally I thought it was a lost cause because joeys are notoriously difficult to raise, and Jojo was way to small to be a good candidate.

Michelle kept her in a box beside the stove and every two hours fed her through a tiny piece of electrical wire insulation, a mixture of sunshine milk, egg and powered charcoal. It may seem like a strange mixture but Jojo thrived. She grew fur, graduated to a hessian bag with a slit in the front hanging beside the wood stove and learned to drink from a poddy lambs bottle. The heat from the wood stove kept her warm through the icy frosts of winter. She became Michelle’s little shadow, always following close behind, however at any strange noise Jojo would race flat out through the house to the kitchen and dive head first into her substitute pouch.

Having just got rid of the bloody roos living in the house, we had another one inside.

Jojo grew up surrounded by dogs and had absolutely no fear of them. If they got a bit boisterous she would bite them around the head. Kangaroos have sharp teeth and a few strange dogs learned the hard way, this was not a kangaroo to be trifled with.