Why does the wallaby cross the road?

A field of opium poppies in Tasmania.

We’ve got the greatest bus driver taking us around the Tamar Valley. His name is Joe and he talks non-stop although I only understand about half of what he’s saying. He’ll slow the bus and point at some green rolling hills in the distance and yak away for a few minutes. Maybe he’s talking about the blue wattle trees or a red-tail hawk floating in the currents or the white poppies growing in the field (there are a lot of opium poppy fields in Tasmania, grown for the pharmaceutical industry, and the flowers, just now coming into bloom, look spectacular). It doesn’t matter; it’s just fun listening to Joe go on about whatever it is that interests him.

I asked Joe about all the roadkill I’ve been seeing. It doesn’t look like any roadkill I’m used to seeing in the states. This stuff is all the size of a cocker spaniel and has a dark, shiny coat and a long, pointy tail. “Itz wallaby, itn’t it,” said Joe. Really? From where the ship is docked at Beauty Point to the little town of Chudleigh, where we visited a honey farm, I’d counted 26 roadkills. Certainly they couldn’t all be wallabies.

“Not, not all,” Joe told me. “Might be one or two rabbits in the mix.”

The thing is, most of the roadkill looks quite fresh. Like from last night. As cute as they are, you won’t find too many Tassies feeling bad about smacking into a wallaby. “They’re pests,” says Joe. “Large rats.”

Still, it makes me a bit queasy. Especially when the roadkill is a young joey. And if I’m spotting a wallaby roadkill just about every mile or so on the road, that must mean there are tens of thousands of them out there in the bush. Either that or they’re very unlucky crossing the road.