A Port Lincoln fishing crew pulled a swimming kangaroo out of Boston Bay, about 3 km from shore

A fishing crew on Boston Bay, off Port Lincoln in South Australia, rescued a kangaroo swimming about three kilometres from shore, ABC News reported on 21 October.

The skipper, Ryan Smith, saw it first. “He’s like, ‘I reckon there’s a roo in the water’, and we’re like, ‘Yeah, sure. All right, Ryan, sure,’” said Jake Murray, a diver and farmer on the crew. “So we doubled back to check it out and yeah, it was a bloody roo in the water!”

The kangaroo, a male, was worn out and waterlogged. The crew lowered the boat’s sea door, which comes down to the water line, got under its arms and lifted it on board.

Murray held it all the way back, keeping hold of its legs because they are strong. “It was almost like he was having a little nap,” he said.

Miguel Villarroel, a diver on the crew from the Galápagos Islands, had never seen a kangaroo before. “He’s like, ‘Oh, does this happen a fair bit?’ I’m like, ‘Mate, I’ve never seen this in my life,’” Murray said.

Nobody knows how it got so far out. Murray’s guess: “Probably a teenager trying to impress his mates.”

On the beach it sat and rested for a while, then hopped away.