If you live along Australia’s east coast, you’ve probably seen a swamp wallaby flash by in forest undergrowth or bound dangerously across the road. With its long tail and dark coat, you might have even mistaken it for the fabled black panther rumoured to roam the Blue Mountains.
But in Queensland’s Coombabah Lakelands, on Kombumerri Country, there’s a different type of swamp wallaby few have encountered: the golden morph. And photographer Jack Evershed was hellbent on finding one.
“I didn’t realise just how elusive it’d be, and I started to think I’d probably never see it. I don’t even think many of the locals know it’s there,” he tells me. “Seeing it and finding out that it was actually real got me hooked.”
The golden swamp wallaby lives in nature reserves around the Gold Coast and on Stradbroke Island. With little scientific investigation on the matter, we can only speculate as to why some swamp wallabies here look different to their dark, fluffy counterparts. But they are, indeed, all members of the same species: Wallabia bicolor.
Still, their rarity and sleek, golden sheen give them a mythical quality, Jack says. He dedicated a winter to his search in the Coombabah Lakelands. All up, he spent around 80 hours trailing a golden swamp wallaby, learning his curious habits and finding solace in his company.
The white whale of wallabies
Every Saturday at 5am, Jack would drive an hour to the lakelands and wander the reserve, wielding his camera, ears attuned to the telltale rustle of leaf litter. It took a month, or four Saturday mornings, to catch his first glimpse of gold.
“The first time it was a really rainy day, with no one else around. He [a golden swamp wallaby] kind of just appeared on the side of the path, and I was shocked. I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t well practiced at that point in the fieldcraft of learning what he does and where he goes,” Jack says.
At first, Jack succeeded in spotting the wallaby in only around one in five attempts. But after some persistent trial and error, Jack eventually became an expert on the wallaby’s habits and routes through the forest.
But, often when they did cross paths, the sunlight was so harsh that the trees cast vast shadows on the forest floor, rendering his photos unusable. On those days, Jack quietly observed the wallaby pulling branches down to munch on leaves, or cleaning its paws, from a safe distance.
“You don’t want to humanise them, but sometimes he’d sit against a tree and look as though he’s deep in thought,” Jack says.
One time, he saw the wallaby fight with another, darker swamp wallaby that disappeared into the bush when Jack neared. Another time, Jack followed the wallaby to the shelter of large trees, where he saw him nestle into long grass.
“He went from seated, to lying curled up. He put his head down and closed his eyes to sleep. This is possibly something no one has ever seen before, because I do wonder if there’s anyone else that would be this obsessed to track him to this point.”
Fantastic beasts
Dr Marissa Parrott is the Senior Conservation Biologist at Zoos Victoria. She says the wallaby’s golden coat is most likely due to a genetic mutation that leads to lower levels of pigment in the fur – much like rare golden brushtail possums (Trichosurus vulpecula).
“In order for that colour to continue there has to be some benefit to it,” she says. “And then they breed and proliferate that beautiful gold in those few, distinct locations.”
The colour of swamp wallaby coats can vary from golden to mottled brown to near black, with creamy bellies and ginger ears. They tend to get chunkier, fluffier and darker the further south they live, where they’re camouflaged in the dim light of wetter, colder woodland areas, Marissa explains.
“As you go further north the light changes and the areas become a lot sandier,” she says.So, one possible explanation for their colour could be that the golden morph “just evolved to better suit that habitat – where they’re still in woodlands, but with sandier colours”.
Some swamp wallabies can even appear stripey in the rain, or nearly black. Given the way they dart into misty trees in your periphery, it’s no wonder some onlookers have declared they’ve seen a Tassie tiger or a black panther.
Yet even the dullest-looking swamp wallabies are fantastical beasts in their own right. They have remarkable biology that’s unlike anything else on the planet: they’re the only mammal that can fall pregnant with a second joey while still pregnant with the first. This is, in part, thanks to female swamp wallabies having two uteruses.
“It’s just so interesting – this beautiful, unassuming, fluffy wallaby, you’d never imagine they have such an amazing reproductive system. It’s really unusual,” Marissa says.
Marissa directly observed this phenomenon when she helped hand-raise an orphaned swamp wallaby named Phil while working on her PhD in her early 20s. Phil was a part of a breeding program at the University of Melbourne that eventually led to this discovery.
“I still remember him so fondly. I’ve got a photo of him on my wall. He gave me an appreciation and a love for swamp wallabies at an early stage, and I’ve continued that throughout my career.”
Safe, for now
Australia has the world’s worst extinction rate for mammals (LINK), but swamp wallabies have relatively stable numbers. Their conservation status is “Least Concern”.
This is because the species is highly adaptable. Swamp wallabies can live in a range of environments, from forest to swamp and on the urban fringe, and eat a varied diet of shrubs, leaves and fungi.
Unlike other wallabies that are nearly extinct – such as the critically endangered brush-tailed rock-wallaby – swamp wallabies are also large enough to not fall victim to feral cats and foxes.
“Thankfully they’re one of the species that seems to have done better alongside us as we make so many changes to their habitat,” Marissa says. “But that doesn’t mean they don’t face threats from dogs, cars and habitat destruction. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care for them.”
This could include, she says, by driving slowly at dawn and dusk, observing them from a distance only, and helping protect their remaining habitat.
The healthy presence of swamp wallabies along Australia’s east coast may be why the rare golden morph so readily captures our imagination.
For Jack, who moved to Australia from the UK some five years ago, the quest for the elusive golden swamp wallaby presented him with a fresh start.
“I was utterly miserable. I was in a time of transition and the experience helped me feel more at home here, and as though I was contributing something meaningful,” he says.
“What better sort of remedy for stress and work worries is there than getting out and about in nature?”