In this montage drawing, a red kangaroo joey gazes out with innocence from the comfort and safety of his mother’s pouch.  The superimposed adult paw prints behind him symbolise and point to his destiny while his eye reflects freedom and independence on the salt bush plains.

Born in an embryonic form, the 1-2cm long hairless joey must survive a perilous journey climbing up through the mother’s fur from cloacae to pouch where it firmly attaches its mouth to one of four nipples. When I first worked on the land in the sixties, the old kangaroo shooters and stockmen were emphatic in their belief that the joey was ‘born on the teat.’ This was due to its tiny embryonic appearance and its strong, permanent fixture to the end of a long nipple in the pouch. Around this time some European researchers filmed the remarkable birth of a captive kangaroo for the first time, but I could never convince the old timers!