Surfer saves drowning kangaroo off Gold Coast beach

Neil McCallum, 48, was on a morning walk with his son, Jazz, 15, about 6am on Tuesday along Kirra Beach when a juvenile roo bounded across his path, dived into the surf and started swimming out to sea.

Concerned that two hammerhead sharks had been in the same spot in recent days, the pair kept an eye on the roo until it got caught in a rip.

"A guy came up and said: 'Gee your dog's a long way out'," Mr McCallum said yesterday. "I said: 'That's not a dog, that's a kangaroo'."



So Mr McCallum, a father of three, dashed home, grabbed his long board and returned to the rescue.

"It was very frightened by the time I got to it. I grabbed it on the back and it sort of shook me off like a wild animal. So I tried to wrestle him on to my surfboard and he found it difficult to stay on board."

Eventually he herded the roo into a sand bar where it recovered before bounding away. Mr McCallum said he'd never seen a kangaroo in the area before, only bush turkeys and, yesterday morning, a koala.