Kangaroo Cartoon

Kangaroo Mother and Joey Cartoon

HI there Australians!!!  We are coming there in a couple of months!  I just drew a cartoon kangaroo, because I saw someone from Australia is on the blog tonight.   I will write about the kangaroo and draw one tonight.   But I will draw a much more detailed and realistic one when I get to photograph some while we are there!  IN FACT I will draw several and some wallaby too!   We met with our travel agent yesterday!

According to my wife(who has been to Australia)  the kangaroos are like deer in North America.  They are a very common large herbivore.   They are indigenous to Australia and no other continent.  My wife says some farmers and ranchers hate kangaroos because the kangaroos will knock down fences.  I read that there are an estimated 35 million kangaroos in the agricultural areas of Australia  This is up around 10 million more than last year.   Yikes!  On the farm I grew up on in Central Utah, USA we only had to worry about rabbits.

Kangaroos are marsupials so the baby is born tiny and then develops much more in its mother's pouch. The baby kangaroo is called a Joey.  As far as I know, the only marsupial in North America is the opossum or possum.   Kangaroos come in several different species with the wallaby being another type of generally smaller kangaroo.  The largest kangaroo is the Red Kangaroo and the males  weigh up to 200 lbs or mass at 91 kg.   They stand around 5.9 feet or 1.8 meters tall.  However, a confirmed larger one was 6.9 feet or 2.1 meters tall.  Females are somewhat smaller at a weight of between 40-88 lbs or a mass between 18-40 kg.

Kangaroos and wallabies have large powerful back legs and a powerful and big tail.  When on the move a Red Kangaroo can move at up to 35 mph or   kph and jump up to 6 feet or 1.8 meters high and a horizontal distance of 25 feet or 7.62 meters in a single jump. 

By the way, I have ALWAYS wanted to see Australia.   I also always wanted to see the South Pacific Islands.  We will probably also go to Fiji in the next few months.  (same trip as the Australia Trip)
We, my wife and I both have some very serious health issues and we want to travel before we become so disabled that we have to stay home or move into a care center.   So we are using some retirement money we saved for these trips.  The best advice I could give young adults is to start saving money for your retirement.   Also, to everyone I would say if you want to travel, then do it while you can.  Be frugal in your other expenses and you can choose to travel if that is what you want to do.