He may never have been very hip but Rolf Harris was right about keeping your marsupials under control. The Australian singer and painter advised sports to tie their kangaroos down. A circus touring Ireland has just found the wisdom of this after one of its wallabies did a runner in Co Cork.
Sydney, a two-year-old wallaby, decided that he wanted to go walkabout in west Cork last Sunday, so he skipped out of the pen where he was being kept with his three siblings during a visit by the Australia Super Circus to Belgooly for the Innishannon Vintage Steam Rally.
Circus spokesman and clown Jan Erik Brenner told The Irish Times that they reckon Sydney made his bid for freedom when a child visiting the wallaby enclosure may have forgotten to close the pen door and the young wallaby went waltzing to freedom.
"He's about 2½ feet high and has boundless energy - we've got about 10 or 12 reports of people seeing him all over different parts of Co Cork, but we reckon that most of them are probably mistaken, or else he's going on a walking tour of Ireland.
"It's a bit like the Loch Ness monster at this stage, there have been so many sightings, but we reckon most people have probably seen a dog or a sheep - we had one report of him in a field of sheep and when we checked it out it was a brown sheep."
According to Jan Erik, Sydney should be well able to survive in the Irish countryside, living off grass and roots and sunbathing in open fields, though he is concerned that he could be injured or killed when crossing roads, as he as no experience of traffic.
Anyone who sees a wallaby matching Sydney's description can report the sighting to John Walsh on 087-2544697.