Outback Feeding Time

"I would love to travel Australia..." I told my friend, a fellow University of Queensland exchange student "but it's expensive."
"Have you tried HelpX?"
Thus began my journey to Uralla Wildlife Sanctuary; a pocket of paradise, outback adventure and raw Australian life, 4300km away in Western Australia. Google Maps says it's impossible to reach by public transport. I beg to differ. After over forty hours by train; Brisbane to Melbourne then Adelaide and the legendary Indian Pacific which traverses miles between Sydney and Perth, I reached my pick-up point at Mount Barker, WA, where a traditional Aussie 'Ute' - an open-backed van, awaited me.
Forty five minutes later, passing the recycled toilet seat now serving as a post-box, we reached the ocean. Not the actual ocean; a grey and bouncy and very excitable ocean of wild kangaroos - former residents of Uralla, lining our path to two corrugated steel houses, three-metre dingo fences and wide open nurseries in which the other volunteers were already busy with feeding time.
Feeding time is what life at Uralla is built around. With three different age groups of joeys needing between three and five feeds per day (plus additional two-hourly care through the night for new-born 'Pinkies') volunteers work to a tight schedule. But watching over thirty joeys come bounding over to their respective carers, accompanied by a few handfuls of fully grown reds and Euros - permanent residents unable to be released in Western Australia, made it all worthwhile. Blink and you miss it as the babies guzzle their food, but catch up in the kitchen and you'll see they drink powdered milk from tiny bottles. When it's all gone down and the dingoes are walked, it's time to snuggle with the volunteers in their house, tucked up in homemade pouches.

'Uralla' means 'Our Home' in the Aboriginal language, and looking around at the traces of volunteers and other animals alike which remain about the place it is easy to see why. A central feature in the yard is a tree wearing all manner of left-luggage and across the outer walls are painted the rescued residents that never made it to release. Nevertheless, life at Uralla gave them - and all who visit, a lifetime opportunity of love for a side of Australia rarely seen, to join human and other animals beside a campfire under a blanket of stars with a home-brewed 'stubby' (beer) and only a generator for the few hours of electricity needed all day. You'll pick up the lingo, "No worries" for that.