Day of the wombat: Lancaster’s Kelsey O’Neill, Caitlyn Elliott and Steven Grima with Kyabram Fauna Park keeper Ambrose Burcher and bare-nosed wombat Maggie.
Lancaster and Girgarre Football Netball Clubs have a history of rivalry, but a truce was called for a joint celebration at Kyabram’s Fauna Park on Monday morning.
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It was a case of celebrating the international days of two of the park’s most loveable characters — Maggie the bare-nosed wombat and Cookie the kangaroo.
Last Friday, October 22, was Wombat Celebration Day and Sunday, October 24, was World Kangaroo Day.
Lancaster netballers Kelsey O’Neill and Caitlyn Elliott shared the limelight with footballer Steven Grima, while modelling from Girgarre were new coach Damian Cupido and star netballer Holly Butler — who was selected in the Kyabram District Netball League team of the year with Pip Inglis.
For the Wombat breed it was the 16th year of celebrations, although it took Kyabram Fauna Park keeper Ambrose Burcher a fair bit to convince Maggie to be part of the celebrations.
There was no such problem with Cookie, who sat quietly in the arms of new Girgarre coach Damian Cupido during the kangaroo photo shoot.
Cookie is a 16-month-old Kangaroo Island breed who was born at the fauna park and lives happily with her parents and 13 other western and eastern kangaroos.
Maggie is about 14kg heavier than her Australian native friend, at 26kg, and was certainly playing hard to get prior to the photo shoot.
Keeper Ambrose Burcher had a hard time collecting the highly mobile wombat, who can run at 40km/h for about 100m if let outside of her enclosure.
Roo-spect: Girgarre football coach Damian Cupido with decorated netballer Holly Butler, and kangaroo Cookie, on Monday.
The fauna park has two bare-nosed wombats and one southern hairy nosed wombat.
Maggie is a fully grown wombat and came to the park from Healesville Sanctuary.
Unlike the kangaroo all three wombat species are protected under Australian law. The northern hairy-nosed wombat is critically endangered and its total population consists of only 163 animals.
The other two species, the southern hairy nosed wombat and the common wombat are not endangered.
In 2009, the NSW Government approved the hunting and killing of 269,000 kangaroos while the Federal Government allowed nearly four million to be killed in the same year.
National Kangaroo Awareness Day is observed annually on October 24.
Girgarre footballers will start their pre-season on November 17, while at Lancaster training will commence on November 29.
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