Josh Neille and his family care for animals doing it tough – orphaned joeys, emus on the mend and wombats battling. Growing Up Wombat is a heart-warming memoir of Josh and his family, as they fight for the Australian wildlife to live their best lives. Read on for an extract.

Gomez, one of our wombats, was probably ready to go for a good month, but I waited for the weather to turn right. We needed a bit of rain, so there would be good grass and plenty of vegetation for him when he went back to the wild.

I picked out an area 40km from our house – heaps of vegetation, good cover, not many people, a long way from a busy road. On the drive out, we spotted two wombats, which is a sign that you’re in a good neighbourhood for an ambitious critter to start his new life.

We found a hole and checked for signs that no other wombat bull was living there. The last thing you want as a wombat is for some other bloke to walk in the front door of your burrow and make himself at home.

My daughter, Ashlee, let him out of his crate and said some kind farewell words. Gomez was fine. No worries at all – started sniffing around, grabbed a snack from the food we left out. No aggro at all, no instinct to defend the territory from me. Just a wombat with no worries at all, out on an adventure. Then, crikey-Moses, look at him go – trotting off into the bush.

It was the right thing for Gomez, to get him back out in the wild. But Ashlee was going to miss him, and she had a few tears. It made me sad to see her so sad.

I just kept telling her it was the right thing to do – that critters need to be in the wild. She knew that, and eventually her tears dried up. Because she loved him, she wanted him to be happy and living his best life. It was a hard day and a lesson to learn, but a good one for her in the end.

That’s growth, hey. You learn from the hard stuff.

We call it growing crocodile skin. It not only toughens you up, but it also conditions you for the challenges in life, both emotionally and physically. One day, it might not be a critter you’re letting go of, it might be a loved one, so experiences like this are a good stepping stone to later life.

The animal rescue books are a guide, but, like parenting, until you’re in it, you don’t really know what’s going on. You have wins, you have losses, and you learn.

Which is not something I hide from Ashlee. It’s important that she grows up knowing that, for as much joy and excitement it gives us, the privilege to grow up alongside these wild critters has a harsh side. Every once in a while, the critter she’s helping rear up just isn’t going to make it.

Ashlee is still getting used to letting go. When you think about it, the first wombat we released, when she was two, had been with her for her whole life. She’d never known life without that critter by her side.

Part of you wants to keep them forever. But after you do this for a certain amount of time, you understand that you can’t keep them all. Because if you keep one, it’s taking up the spot of the next Aussie battler that’s in some mischief and needs a hand or even a new family to raise it.

This is an edited extract from Growing Up Wombat (Affirm Press) by Josh Neille, out September 30.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Josh Neille is a registered wildlife carer from country Victoria. This is his first book.

You can find our more at @joshneille11