‘Three sorts of kangaroo’: which species did James Hamilton recognise in south-western Victoria in the mid-19th century?

In 1846, the colonial Government in Sydney authorised occupation of the Wimmera Pastoral District by European graziers. Amongst the first to be granted land in the district was the Hamilton family, who established large pastoral runs called Bringalbert Station and nearby Ozenkadnook Station, north of today’s Edenhope. James Charles Hamilton lived on Bringalbert Station from 1846, when he was 9–10 years old, until 1912. Hamilton later published a book of reminiscences of his ‘pioneering life’. Amongst the few natural history observations in the book is a paragraph on the ‘three sorts of kangaroo’ that Hamilton recognised. Here, I attempt to discern the specific identity of those three macropods, drawing upon Hamilton’s statements, regional Aboriginal vocabularies and the species of Macropodidae known to have occurred in the region. I conclude that the 3 species were Eastern Grey Kangaroo, Western Grey Kangaroo and Red-necked Wallaby. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]