Released next week, Kangaroo is set to be one of this year’s hit feel-good family films – and here I am in the Australian Outback, with a pair of dozing joeys in my arms, as though I’ve stepped into the silver screen.
The Kangaroo Sanctuary in Alice Springs is in the heart of Australia’s dusty red centre, where just before sunset three days a week founder Chris ‘Brolga’ Barns allows visitors to hold baby kangaroos as dozens of adults hop about and other joeys drink from milk bottles.
The filmmakers – the same as those behind Paddington – chose Barns’ sanctuary and the remote town of Alice Springs as it made a perfect setting surrounded by sweeping mountain ranges, while also enjoying a gritty melting pot of culture, language and Aboriginal history.
Around 200 local businesses were involved in the production. Crews worked closely with traditional elders to respect cultural sensitivities – the town sits in Arrernte Country, which is managed under Australia’s Aboriginal Land Rights system – and around £2.2million was injected into the community.
Now the hope is that tourists from around the world will flock to visit Alice Springs, in Australia’s sparsely populated Northern Territory, to see places featured in the film.
There are around 70 kangaroos at the sanctuary. ‘The first thing we do when an orphan comes in is give them a buddy so they’ll never be alone,’ Barns tells the small group of visitors on my visit. ‘We rescue babies from dead mums at the roadside… So to them, I’m mum,’ he explains, as he feeds a pair of orphans from a milk bottle.
The film Kangaroo is set in the fictional Outback town of Silver Gum and follows Sydney TV weatherman Chris Masterman (played by Ryan Corr), who becomes stranded after a car accident and teams up with a 12-year-old indigenous girl named Charlie (played by Lily Whiteley) to rescue injured and orphaned kangaroos.
Barns – the real-life founder of the sanctuary, 20 years ago – has never worked as a weatherman, run his car into a kangaroo or befriended a local girl named Charlie, but he certainly shares Corr’s star quality.
Kangaroo is set to be one of this year’s hit feel-good family films – hitting UK cinema screens on 30 January
Chris ‘Brolga’ Barns – alongside two joeys from his sanctuary in Australia
He’s a tall, charismatic former zookeeper who cuts a wild, Crocodile Dundee-type figure in his Outback hat and khaki overalls – little wonder locals have nicknamed him Kangaroo Dundee.
Most of his roos, he says, have been brought in by drivers who have stumbled across a dead creature and looked inside the pouch.
Barns is keen to educate visitors about the need to do this – and his number one tip is always to carry a pillowcase in your car boot to act as a temporary pouch for an orphaned joey.
He picks up a bucket of feed and a dozen adult kangaroos come bouncing over in a scene so picture-perfect it almost looks put on. But Barns insists this is what happens every day here on his 188-acre reserve, even when public tours are not running.
The santuary’s eventual aim? ‘To try to get all of them back to the bush,’ he says.
Children must be over the age of seven to visit the reserve, which is far from being some kind of kangaroo Disneyland. There’s no gift shop or café and Barnes intends to keep it that way.
There’s plenty else to do in Alice Springs. After cuddling and bottle-feeding the joeys, I try dot painting with local artist Ayeye Atyenhe in the local botanic gardens.
Then I go swimming in sacred gorges surrounded by some of the world’s oldest eucalyptus and ghost gum trees. I even attend a traditional healing ceremony at the Akeyulerre Healing Centre.
Kangaroos at Alice Springs Desert Park – which is well worth a visit
Barns, right, is a tall, charismatic former zookeeper who cuts a wild, Crocodile Dundee-type figure in his Outback hat and khaki overalls
Katie at Standley Chasm, a gorge in the West MacDonnell Ranges not far from Alice Springs
Bill from Sandrifter Safaris is your man for a day trip exploring the nearby East MacDonnell Ranges, and John from Alice Springs Expeditions runs fantastic tours in the equally breathtaking West MacDonnell Ranges – a chance to tick off many of the gorges, waterholes and hiking trails featured in the film.
On a tour of West MacDonnell, our Aboriginal guide Will talks us through some of the ‘dreaming’ creation stories that have been passed through the generations here and are used to explain the landscape’s giant rock formations.
It’s a joyful experience entering the remote, evocative scenery – just as it has been witnessing the kangeroos up close and personal.
My advice? Go see the film… then visit the stars of it, too.
Kangaroo is released in UK cinemas on Friday, January 30.
