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Inside, a worker was grating apples and adding them to growing mounds of shredded roughage. “Peter is preparing food for wombats and pademelons. We give them twenty-seven to twenty-nine different fruits and vegetables. This gives them a variety of tastes. So when they go back to the wild, they'll feed on different food sources. It's much better than a mono-diet.”

“What do you feed the carnivores?”

“I usually feed the quolls a mixture of chicken, rabbit, and wallaby. The devils get whole or partial carcasses.”

Androo crutched into an outdoor Tasmanian devil exhibit. “There are two little devils in here. One got attacked by a dog. The other had denned under a house and the owners trapped it and brought it here.” The devils were young and agile, climbing onto a propped-up log. The toes peeping out of Androo's cast looked like they might make a tasty meal for a young devil. But Androo seemed oblivious as he shunted the devils aside to muck out their pen.

“There's a rural myth that devils are dangerous,” Androo said, observing our wondering look. “Most devils here at Trowunna will let me pick them up, even while they're eating. The devil by nature is a timid animal. They have a very sophisticated confrontation avoidance system. They are aggressive around carcasses, and there are some devils you can't pick up. They'll bite you and go, Rah, rah, bug off, you.”

Although these two devils had been rescued, a large number of An-droo's devils had been born at Trowunna. The wildlife park had a breeding population of more than thirty devils and he was working to build up the numbers, due to the epidemic striking Tasmania's devil population. Although Androo didn't think the disease would push wild devils to the brink—the species had recovered from epidemics before—he was increasing Trowunna's breeding population just in case.

Androo and Rulla went into a pen with five young devils. One devil approached Rulla, hissing and baring his fangs. Rulla's leg wasn't much thicker than a wallaby's tail, and we were momentarily alarmed. But Rulla executed a dance step around a water pan to get out of the way. “Aww, that's just Mr. Kim,” Androo said of the bad-tempered devil as if he were referring to a petulant teenager.

“So,” we asked uneasily, “how did you become so comfortable with wild animals?”

Androo looked a little wild himself. His hair was tousled and spiky. “Animals were always important to me from a young age,” he said. “I grew up in a beautiful environment on the banks of the Huon River. I have memories of when I was three and seeing a potoroo. They have a gleam in their eye and a little smiley look to them, and I used to talk about potoroos as my friends. No one believed me, because no one else saw them. They thought I was talking about a fairy in the garden.”

His affinity for wildlife also accounted for the unusual spelling of his name. “About fifteen years ago, I realized there were a lot of other Andrew Kellys about. So, I changed my name to Androo with two o's like the potoroo.

“Potoroos,” he added, “are everywhere here at Trowunna. We're a sanctuary for these small animals. That's why we're here. Once they cross outside our fence into that next paddock, it's guns and dogs, feral cats and foxes maybe, poison baits. It's war.”

We asked if he thought the thylacine would have benefited from this sort of sanctuary.

“I don't think about the thylacine that much,” he said.

Oh.

Obviously, things had changed since the wildlife park changed management. Androo wasn't going to launch an expedition to find the thylacine anytime soon. As far as he was concerned, it was extinct. What needed to be kept alive, he said, was the thylacine's story, so that people would learn from its tragic history and more animals wouldn't be pushed to the brink by human activities.

“I'm concerned that what happened to the thylacine could happen to animals now on the edge. Look at the thylacine's relative, the spottedtailed quoll. This is the world's third-largest carnivorous marsupial after the thylacine