THREE members of an Australian family used a broom and a shovel to fight off a rare attack by a large kangaroo that left all of them injured, one seriously.
Linda Smith, 64, suffered a collapsed lung, broken ribs, cuts and other internal injuries, and underwent surgery in hospital on Sunday after the Saturday evening attack at her property in the Darling Downs region of Queensland state.
The wildlife carer and her husband Jim had been feeding 30 kangaroos and wallabies at their property every night amid a severe drought that has depleted their food sources.
One of the large males – at least 1.8 metres tall – turned on her husband as he fed it, she told Queensland Ambulance Service.
Their 40-year-old son “came out to try and help me and hit him over the head with a shovel”.
The kangaroo then hopped off back into the bush, Queensland Ambulance Service’s senior operations supervisor Stephen Jones said, adding that the attack was “rare”.