Jennie Bryant, wildlife carer
Off Western Port Highway some 30 km north-east of Shoreham, there’s a scrubby bush block with a fence decorated in a few metal images of koalas, but no sign. Blink and you’ll miss it.
This is home for 71-year- old Jennie Bryant and her patients. Jennie is neither a vet nor a nurse, but has dedicated more than 40 years to looking after injured wildlife, koalas in particular. In 2013, she received an Order of Australia medal for her volunteer work.
“Jennie’s a local hero,” says Mornington Peninsula Koala Conservation (MPKC) president, Dirk Jensen.
“I don’t know what we’d do without her. She’s the only one here with that much experience in managing koalas and their very specific needs.”
Local vet Dr Matthew Ray agrees. He’s a co-owner of the Westernport Veterinary Clinic with branches in Hastings, Somerville and Balnarring. Jennie regularly brings in wildlife for assessment and surgery.
“Her accumulated knowledge is invaluable,” he says. “We feel we get much more from Jennie than she gets from us. When we look at a koala, we often need to tap into her experience of what’s normal and what’s not.”
Mornington Peninsula Koala Conservation estimates there’s been a 70 per cent decline in koala numbers on the Peninsula over the past 20 years.
“The reasons are multiple,” Dirk says, “the main ones being the increasing numbers of visitors and residents here, and the destruction of native habitat through private land clearing. Then there’s inappropriate fencing, dogs, cattle and cars. Most of the sick and injured koalas end up with Jennie.”
By her own admission, paperwork is not Jennie’s forte, so nailing exactly how many koalas Jennie has rescued is hard. She estimates it’s anywhere between 40 and 100 a year. Multiply that by 40 and the figure could be as high as 4000, if not more.
Most have sustained such horrific injuries they die. Less than half recover sufficiently for release back into the wild.
“People call me eccentric,” Jennie says. “But I was just born differently; I can’t turn away from any creature needing help.”
There are more than koalas at the Koala Rescue and Rehabilitation refuge outside Tyabb.
When the SCA visits, there are Cape Barren geese, corellas, a tawny frogmouth, a long-necked turtle, and a shingleback skink, all in different phases of recovery.
Some are in enclosures scattered among the gum trees. Others are in the corrugated iron outhouse Jennie calls the hospital, and it’s here we sit down to talk. It’s a riot of donated incubators, cages and blankets, a fridge full of medicine and milk, piles of remaindered food and strange noises.
A recently-hatched kookaburra, its mouth open, looks up at Jennie. Someone found the egg lying on the ground with no nest in sight. Across the room a peregrine falcon that Jennie thinks was hit by a car is recuperating in a cage.
Jennie’s two pet poodles vie for attention. And her partner, 78-year-old Laurie French, wanders in and out to report on the goats and sheep they’re raising. She ribs him about interrupting us.
For all Jennie’s dust dry sense of humour and passion, it’s clear the couple are exhausted, and live on next to nothing but the drive to nurture.
The Bendigo Bank helps out with donations. The Westernport Veterinary Clinic helps out with complex cases. Three nights a week, Laurie picks up trolley loads of free, expired or damaged fruit and veggies for the wildlife from Aldi in Hastings.
But Jennie estimates her out-of-pocket costs for things like special food, vitamins, lice and worming treatment, property maintenance and fuel run to north of $10,000 a year.
Volunteer wildlife carers, advocacy groups and local vets know Jennie’s mobile number. And she can’t keep up with the increasing demand for help.
As soon as she gets a call about a creature in distress, Jennie heads off in her battered old ute. Often that’s between dusk and dawn when marsupials go looking for food.
“Last week there was a kangaroo on the road without a face but still breathing,” Jennie says. “I couldn’t put it down fast enough. The pain would have been excruciating. You can’t unsee that and it haunts you.”
Dirk Jensen says most wildlife rescuers and carers only last a few years. “It’s 24/7, and it takes a huge toll psychologically.”
Local animal welfare groups have recorded 50 eastern grey kangaroos and swamp wallabies killed on Peninsula roads over summer - December 2024 through to the end of February 2025.
Eighteen koalas have died the same way between October and February - a period which includes their breeding season. Many more have been injured.
“Jennie is at her wit’s end,” says the koala group’s vice president Belinda Eden.
“Koalas are territorial. She’ll get them well enough to release only then to find their home has been impacted by tree removal or is surrounded by high-speed roads, sometimes both. The end result is that these koalas end up returning to care, or dead. We need changes to planning laws to stop unnecessary vegetation removal and road safety initiatives in place now.”
Time is running out for Jennie and her patients.
“I’ll never stop looking after creatures, but I just want tie up a few loose ends in my life,” she says. “Laurie has a heart condition and I’m not getting any younger. It’s time to hand the baton on.”
Jennie wants to see a fully funded wildlife hospital built on the Mornington Peninsula.
And longtime local kangaroo awareness campaigner Craig Thomson is right behind her.
“Several years ago, we estimated the cost to build a centre would range between $2 and $5 million,” he says. “It wouldn’t need to be built all at once, but could start with a surgery and grow over time.”
Now he is pinning his hopes on a project that could be funded by private donors and the public on Shire council owned land in Tuerong, along the lines of Kanyana Wildlife in Perth.
“But even if this got the green light, it will be many years before it would be up and running. In the meantime, the wildlife we all love rely on people like Jennie Bryant.”
