Even as a fierce bushfire bore down on the rural Australian community of Wytaliba, Gary Wilson and his partner Julie Willis decided not to flee their timber home - they had a house full of orphaned baby kangaroos to protect.
Left: The remains of trees, burnt during the bushfire season, stand in the community of Wytaliba. Right: A pair of kangaroos stand amongst the remains of burnt trees.
"It was a horrible thing ... the whole bush has been burnt. It's been vaporised - it's Vietnam is what it looks like," Wilson said as infant kangaroos ate grain from a trough fashioned from a car tyre and lined up two-by-two to be bottle-fed special milk.
Willis said she had never seen fires so fierce, and that most animals, such as possums, gliders, echidnas, lizards and even many birds were not fast enough to escape the flames.
"It's not until after the fires when it really hits you how close you were to dying but at the time you are too busy trying to put the fire out," she said.
Left: Willis feeds orphaned kangaroo joeys.
Willis said the joeys, which are fed a special milk formula every two to four hours just like their human counterparts, will eventually be released back into the wild.
"We didn't have children ourselves; this is what we spend our time doing,' she said, as she gently stroked a joey on her lap while another nudged her feet. "We think it's worthy - a worthy cause - looking after our babies no matter what they are, whether they are kangaroos, echidnas or wombats."
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PHOTO EDITING MARIKA KOCHIASHVILI; WRITING Jonathan Barrett; Text editing Jane Wardell; LAYOUT JULIA DALRYMPLE
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Watch Gary and Julie take care of orphaned kangaroo joeys.