The City Is Never Empty

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Do you ever see wild animals?

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One of the quiet joys of living in Australia is discovering how thin the line really is between suburbia and the wild. We talk as if the bush is “out there,” somewhere beyond the edges of our cities, but the truth is that the wild never left. It waits at the margins, watching, moving, slipping through the gaps in our noise.

During the COVID lockdowns, people were startled to see a kangaroo hop through the centre of Adelaide’s business district—as if it had wandered in from some mythical outback. But that moment simply revealed what is always true: kangaroos live just beyond the glass towers, close enough to step inside when the rush subsides. The distance between us and them is not as great as we assume.

I live about sixteen kilometres from the centre of Sydney’s CBD, but in the national park where I do bush regeneration, I often see echidnas and wallabies. Recently, an echidna shuffled along the leaf litter, entirely unbothered by the six-lane arterial road humming behind me. Twenty metres from traffic. Two worlds running in parallel.

At a previous home in suburban Sydney, wallabies would appear in our driveway in the early mornings—quiet, alert, feeding discreetly before the neighbourhood stirred. In the summer months, diamond pythons would emerge in the backyard, draping themselves on a retaining wall or warming themselves on a a sunlit rock, unhurried and entirely at ease. They had no sense of trespass. Why would they? They belonged there.

Sydney, of course, is famous for its birdlife. Cockatoos are cheeky and intelligent, the masterminds of the suburbs. Entire flocks have taught themselves how to open garbage bins, flipping lids with the confidence of seasoned foragers. Lorikeets are colourful jesters—small, noisy, utterly fearless, punching far above their weight in any dispute. And then there are the rosellas, moving with a kind of quiet majesty, as though they carry a deeper memory of this land than we ever will.

So yes, I see wild animals. Constantly. Not because I live remotely, but because this land is alive, responsive, attentive. The wild is not distant; it is simply discreet. It moves at its own pace, reveals itself when it chooses, and reminds us that our human world is only one part of a much older, richer story.

And I’m grateful—deeply grateful—to live in a place where that story still surrounds us.

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if you have a minute, check out the work of these guys in Queensland.
(Warning: Do not try this at home)

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