Thursday 5 November 2026

Good news, well told.

Get the newsletter
Wildlife & Conservation

A boater rows out to rescue a tired wallaby swimming off Portland

An exhausted wallaby more than 100 metres out to sea off south-west Victoria was brought safely back to land and handed to wildlife carers.

Photo: Grendelkhan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A wallaby that had swum more than 100 metres out to sea off Portland, in south-west Victoria, owes its life to a quick-thinking boater. ABC News reports that Matt Smith, visiting from South Australia, spotted the exhausted animal near the marina on Friday morning and rowed his dinghy out to fetch it.

Getting it aboard was only half the job. The wallaby leapt out of the boat once before Smith managed to bring it back to dry land, where local wildlife carers were waiting.

Smith believes the animal would not have lasted much longer if it had kept heading out to sea. It is now resting with the carers, and he has asked beachgoers in the area to keep their dogs on leads so that wildlife is not chased into the water.

Source: ABC News

Share this good news

Most read

  1. A rock found in the Sahara turns out to be one of the oldest pieces of Mars
  2. Nine orangutans return to the forest in Indonesian Borneo
  3. A project will record the skills of the last maker of rapper swords
  4. A Melbourne choir brings more than 100 strangers together through Arabic song
  5. The Rubin Observatory finds a likely new dwarf planet far beyond Pluto