Roos 'blown away' by cyclone

2006-03-23 13:30

Innisfail - Joey the wallaby is missing. And Cyclone Larry is almost certainly to blame.

Margaret Tabone reared the diminutive kangaroo-like creature on her crocodile farm since Joey was just a hairless baby.

Her mother died in a panic about two years ago - running repeatedly into a fence as the neighbouring banana farmer was spraying his crops.

Tabone, 64, said Joey would come to her gate at the Johnstone River Crocodile Farm every morning for a cup of milk.

But since Cyclone Larry hit early on Monday, Joey hasn't been seen. And the whereabouts of nearly 50 other kangaroos and related species at the farm are unknown.

"We can't find them yet - hopefully they're going to be somewhere, and hopefully they're going to be alive," she said.

Joey was so tame that Tabone could still hold her as a grown animal and not suffer a single scratch - the favourite wallaby she's had, of more than 30 raised at the farm.

"This one was my idol," Tabone said.

More losses now feared

Even the supposedly menacing crocodiles on Tabone's farm were so spooked by the strong winds that battered this town they've refused to eat since the cyclone.

This could mean more losses in the days ahead for the farm, which sells the crocodiles for their skins and meat.

"They're petrified, like you and I would be, due to the volume of the wind that we had. I can understand that because I was petrified myself," Tabone said.

"Whether I lose them or not, I don't know yet. We won't know for another week whether they'll get stressed out and they just die on you."

There are nearly 5 000 crocodiles on the farm, but Tabone was confident not a single one was on the loose since the cyclone sent trees tumbling down across her land.

In their pens on Thursday, young crocodiles sat mostly immobile, piled on top of each other until a noise sent some slithering into a shallow pond of water.

Nearby, a cassowary - a large flightless emu-like bird with a brilliant blue head - wandered inside its pen.

A key problem facing wild animals is a lack of food from the destroyed plants they eat. The hundreds of acres of devastated banana fields means creatures like flying foxes, a type of bat that feeds on the fruit, will also need help to survive, said Curtis.

- SAPA