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Keeping and breeding kangaroos is definitely not for everyone. Kangaroos need plenty of room to run and graze. Roos are not house pets, they don’t ride in cars, walk on leashes or do tricks. They are shy and easily stressed in strange situations. Bottle-reared joeys become very tame. Having tame animals is beneficial from a number of perspectives. They are more enjoyable as a hobby farm pet and if you need to handle them for any reason it’s a lot easier and less stressful for all concerned. Roo mums don’t get overly stressed when a joey is taken away. In the wild, they often “toss” their joey if they are being pursued by a predator. This allows the female to escape and live to breed another day. And due to their ability to replace a baby very quickly this only makes sense from a survival perspective. They are not inclined to grieve and search for their young like some animals. Most female roos go right back to grazing after a joey is taken. If they do look around, they don’t do it for very long. A newly “pulled” joey is taken into the house and placed in a warmed soft cloth pouch. For the next few hours someone sits quietly and holds the joey in their lap. Very quickly, the joey becomes curious about what’s going on and starts to peak out and look around. A joey in the house when it is little is delightful. This is only a temporary situation. While the joey is on a purely liquid diet, it will be very easy to keep in the house. Most of joeys will not soil their pouch. They prefer to wait until they are taken to the washroom. Obviously, this needs to be done every few hours during the day to avoid accidents and it should certainly be done before they are let to run around and exercise. To “potty” a roo, we hold it over the toilet and gently rub the cloacal area at the base of the tail. The roo will promptly do its business in the toilet. We then let the baby exercise for a while under close supervision. The joey might go on a “roo run” around the house for a while and then find the next best place to a pouch to take a nap. A roo in the house will get into everything. Once it starts eating solid food, potty training goes right down the tubes too. At this stage, we can’t wait to get it out of the house. NOT a house pet. Source: kangaroocreekfarm.com/keeping-and-breeding-kangaroos/

What looks like a bottle, stores up liquid and has an edible inner bark? The Queensland bottle tree. Shaped like a sturdy wine bottle, these trees are often left standing when undergrowth is cleared away for farming. While not a perfect source, Bottle trees have long been considered an emergency source of sustenance. Bottle trees are often left in fields where cattle are being grown. The leaves can serve as an emergency fodder. In times of extreme drought, farmers have even felled whole trees for cattle. When the outer bark is peeled back, it exposes a soft, edible inner bark. Unfortunately, the pulp is a good source of energy but doesn’t provide much in the way of protein. Some cattle fed on it have developed Nitrate poisoning. The native people who lived in Australia before the Europeans sometimes ate the roots of the young plants or scored the sides of the trees and ate the secretions from them. They used the fiber to make nets. Source: www.designertrees.com.au/queensland-bottle-tree-drink-foo...

... The opening up of the Binjour Plateau means a great thing for Queensland, and to those who understand the value of scrub selections, it will at once commend itself. On a dull day the cloud masses pass over the slopes of this great fertile region, promising plenty of moisture apart from the regular rains, to the grasses and the crops which now in the future will gladden the earth where the riotous tangle of scrub vines and brigalow hold their sway, and where the giant bottle-trees—those valuable adjuncts to the haystack in dry seasons—stand embowered. The Brisbane Courier, 02 Feb 1906 trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/19432925#