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The kangaroo dog was the first dog of colonial Australia. For the first 100 years of colonisation, the big wire-haired hounds served their masters with selfless distinction. They saved Sydney, Hobart Town and Port Dalrymple from the threat of starvation; they accompanied and fed the explorers of the interior, and they did the dirty work in paving the way for pioneers no matter where they ventured. For over a century in New South Wales, Van Diemen’s Land and the other colonies of Australia they were as common as Labradors and Staffordshire bull terriers are today.

The kangaroo dog was never going to win the hearts and minds of the average Australian, though it always had a few adherents. Generally it was nothing more than a tool – a large, expensive, difficult to keep and not very aesthetically appealing tool. Ultimately, the kangaroo dog was doomed. When it outlived its usefulness, it was not afforded the luxury of becoming a companion pet as so many other breeds were when they put their ugly pasts behind them. Its faithful heroics meant nothing, because like most tools, it was only valued for what it did, not what it was.

Kangaroo dogs were the ultimate canine paradox. They were sweet-natured, almost sentimental dogs created for the most brutal work against an innocuous-looking but dangerous herbivore in the harshest continent on earth. And they died in their thousands in the line of duty. The kangaroo dog’s reward for its unflinching service to King, Queen and country was abandonment.

The kangaroo dog is not usually included in the list of Australian-developed breeds. Yet despite its ugly job and ultimate, sad demise, it deserves recognition for its significant contribution to the establishment of the new order during Australia’s toughest years.

— The Dogs That Made Australia by Guy Hull (2018)

Harry Ferries and James Riches (right) carrying two kangaroos they have shot for food near Wyalkatchem,1908

A Kangaroo caught by a Wild Native's Dog, / The Native then seizes the Kangaroo & kills it with his Waddy, 1836, printed 1930/ Benjamin Duterrau

Kangaroo dog owned by Mr Dunn of Castlereagh Street, Sydney, 1853 / painted by Thomas Tyrwhitt Balcombe

Kangaroo hunting / Samuel Thomas Gill

Kangarooers [sic] (starting), 1800-1899 / Samuel Thomas Gill

Kangaroo hunt, Coranderrk, Vic. ca. 1900

A kangaroo hunt on the Pyramid Creek

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The Kangaroo Dog

I suppose an Australian book would be considered incomplete unless a reference was made to the dogs used for running down the marsupials.

For the information of those outside our colonies, and perhaps a few in it whose lives have been spent in the cities, I may say that the name kangaroo dog is applied to any large mongrel which can catch or assist in running down kangaroos. In the early days, when these indigenous animals were plentiful—in fact, pests—all sorts of dogs were bred for the purpose of destroying them, the cross chiefly used being that of the deerhound and greyhound; but the best I ever saw at work was a pedigreed greyhound. I have also seen very good kills by dogs whose breeding no one could even guess at by their appearance. They were simply arrant nondescripts.

A rather warm controversy on the subject of the kangaroo dog took place in the Live Stock Journal in the middle of 1876. A dog named Rover, bred by Mr. R. Hill, of Sydney, was exhibited by Mr. E. C. Le Mariott as a kangaroo hound. The reporter of the journal named compared the dog to a strong-made greyhound, and stated that he knew of dogs that could pass muster as kangaroo hounds if Rover was the genuine article. The paper war, as may be imagined, ended—reporter first, owner unplaced. The former produced Mr. John Douglas’s (the judge) report:—”A mongrel brute was shown as a kangaroo hound.” The most surprising thing in connection with this class of animal is that in certain parts of this country classes are still provided for dogs under the above name, and they are sometimes adjudicated upon by (so-called) English judges who have never seen a kangaroo extended out of a “gentle hop” in the Zoological Gardens. By law the kangaroo is now protected in Victoria against dog and fun, and is thus saved from extinction.

— Walter Beilby, The Dog in Australasia (1897)

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