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THE first roo down is at 8.20pm. A juvenile, one of hundreds feeding at the road's edge, successfully does its best to get in front of our four-wheel-drive, despite the driver's efforts to the contrary.

Doug Jobson, general manager of Macro Meats, the country's biggest kangaroo meat processor and marketer, is a man of bush experience. You can just tell. We stop, he dispatches the injured animal humanely, and we head off again down the long, compacted red-dust ribbon of a road that is taking us to the middle of nowhere. We're looking for a kangaroo shooter.

Kangaroos are wild food; it's surprising how many people actually believe they're farmed. They are shot in their natural habitat, the carcasses bled and eviscerated in the field and stored in isolated chilling rooms before transport south to Adelaide, where Macro typically processes 12,000 carcasses a week.

The vast majority of its processed meat - about 75 per cent - is consumed domestically, and mostly by us after we buy it from supermarkets and restaurants. Pet food is only a byproduct of the processing. We, on the other hand, eat 6450 tonnes of the meat every year, according to Macro boss Ray Borda, also president of the Kangaroo Industry Association. We should eat more.

The middle of nowhere is Mulyungarie, about 75km as the crow flies southwest of Broken Hill, just inside the South Australian border, not too far from the Honeymoon uranium mine. Wake in Fright territory, this is. Desolate is too kind.

A few minutes later, a massive orb of sun finally drops below a monotonous scrub horizon; night doesn't so much fall here ... daylight surrenders. Out here, it's just saltbush, the occasional cow, feral goats, underprivileged sheep ... and loads of kangaroos.

We leave the relatively civil dirt road for a serious bush track through tough-as-nails scrub. In the distance, there's a campfire. This is one of 140 sites in Australia - all in SA, NSW or Queensland - that Macro's licensed shooters, of which there are about 1800, shoot with the permission of landowners. Beside the campfire stands a nuggety Toyota Land Cruiser with a purpose-built stainless steel platform on the back, the result of years of design refinement for the business of shooting kangaroos and retrieving their carcasses in an ergonomic, hygienic manner. It's no car for the weekend shop.

Also beside the fire, the silhouette of Peter Absalom: second-generation roo shooter, son of the legendary Broken Hill painter, pugilist and television personality Jack Absalom, and a man who claims to have shot 450,000 kangaroos in a career spanning 30 years. He lives a solitary life in a cabin out here for 10-week stretches, travelling vast distances by night shooting roos. Jobson reckons it's made the shooter a millionaire.

"You only go home when you need a haircut," jokes Absalom, whose real home is a hamlet outside Adelaide he calls "as close to the city as I want to get". He is a man truly at home in the bush, alone. Shooting roos.

And there are a lot of kangaroos; estimates suggest anywhere between 35 million and 50 million. The shooting quota hovers at about 10-12 per cent of the total estimated population of all species in any given year. For 2013, that quota was 6,223,658, although nothing like that many were actually shot. Maybe 20 per cent.

We are here to see the modern face of the harvest. World's best practice, if you like, of roo shooting. The hygiene measures, the data logging of carcass temperatures, the HAACP procedures that are part and parcel of how the meat gets to our table. It is, as it should be, a tightly regulated industry; some call it the ultimate free-range harvesting. Wake In Fright it is not. But it is a powerful, primal experience: a man, a serious rifle, a spotlight and an animal's death for our plate.

"This is the best bloody animal industry in the world," says Absalom, 57, a crack marksman who knows exactly what to target: mature, male eastern greys and reds. "And I've worked in a lot of animal industries. They're just sitting there in the wild and, whack. Instant. No stress or watching their mates die, none of that."

Two of us jump on the back of the Toyota, a roof-mounted spotlight scanning the bush like a manic lighthouse, Absalom's eyes remarkably tuned to the quarry. My fellow traveller is James Viles, chef/owner of Biota in Bowral, NSW. Despite a reputation for artistic, progressive food, Viles is deeply interested in where food comes from. He grows Wessex Saddleback pigs on a family farm, serious volumes of herbs and vegetables for his restaurant, and wants to see first-hand how kangaroo meat gets to his kitchen.

We head out into the void of night. How do you know which are females? I ask, naively it would seem. "I could tell a bloody female at 500m at night in a gale," Absalom says. He doesn't waste words.

Minutes later, I believe him. The spotlight stops on an animal perhaps 300m away; the diesel shudders to a halt (vibration is no good for marksmanship); and within five seconds there is a fierce report from the .223 rifle mandated by authorities for shooting kangaroos. There must be ruthless efficiency. A kangaroo must be head shot; if it is not, the animal must be killed, but cannot be harvested. Absalom doesn't waste bullets, either. Five shots means five carcasses are hoisted and bled on the back of the truck before we head back to camp, where they are eviscerated (except for the "pluck" - heart, lungs and liver, for lab inspection) and beheaded. They are then taken to a nearby coolroom and later transported to Adelaide.

That's the nuts and bolts of it. The reality, regardless of your perspective, is confronting. I grew up in the country; shooting animals - yes, kangaroos, occasionally - on farms was part of those adolescent years. I am an advocate for eating kangaroo for a host of reasons, not the least being that it's wild. And wild food is increasingly a luxury for those of us who like to eat well and naturally.

Wild food is real. I live in the country, and grin every time a mature eastern grey wanders into the back yard to graze. I've never seen animals killed in an abattoir, but I've been in one. I've seen what happens next. I don't imagine they are great places for an animal to die.

Roo shooting is different, insists Jobson. "If I had a choice, I'd die like a kangaroo. Done correctly, the taking of kangaroos is the most humane harvest in the world."

Commercial shooters must comply with a national code of practice for the humane shooting of kangaroos and wallabies and the food safety procedures are rigorous. Nevertheless, the matter-of-fact manner with which Absalom deals with a carcass is devoid of emotion and takes some getting used to.

Having shared a beer around the fire, we leave his campsite for the drive back to Broken Hill, dodging roos the entire way. Absalom heads out and shoots until dawn.

Next day, while Absalom sleeps, at the restaurant Eat-ADL in Adelaide we try a variety of different cuts from animals he shot earlier. With good handling, and paddock to plate management, this can be exceptional, versatile meat. Sitting in a smart wine bar, last night seems distant indeed. And it is. Mulyungarie. The middle of nowhere. Kangaroo central.

John Lethlean travelled courtesy of Liquid Ideas

NO STRESS IN THE FLESH

WILD-CAUGHT barramundi over farmed stuff. Bunny from the paddock instead of the farmed creature. Wild venison over farmed deer which, unless it's shot in the field, deteriorates considerably under the stress of herding and transport to the abattoir, I'm told.

You get the point. Wild protein is impossible to beat. But, the way I figure it, wild food will increasingly become an almost unaffordable luxury for the next generation.

So here we have a wild food called kangaroo. It's a lean red meat. It comes from a very active herbivore with strong muscles that grazes on natural vegetation. It is slaughtered in the field where it grazes: for the animal, there is almost zero stress to the situation. One minute a (male) kangaroo is grazing in the wild and looking at a spotlight. The next it is dead.

As roo shooter Peter Absalom says, they're not standing around watching their mates die. For a meat eater, this means the flesh is in much better condition: better texture, better flavour.

This is a wild meat in abundance. Not only is this an entirely natural product; it is also very reasonably priced.

So why don't I cook kangaroo more often?

Availability, mainly. Or maybe that's visibility. If it's there, I don't see it. Or think of it.

A few days after getting home from Broken Hill watching Absalom at work, and then Adelaide to see the factory where kangaroo meat is processed, a box arrived with samples to play with. Kangaroo sausages (Kanga Bangers), which are surprisingly delicious, although I'd prefer a thinner case. Various non-marinated cuts (strip loin, steak and fillet which, obviously, don't correlate with beef equivalents) and a few marinated steaks.

What now?

Like any meat cookery, it's a matter of choosing the right cut for the intended application, and on this score we got it about half right.

The steak seemed a worthy candidate for Greek barbecue treatment: olive oil, garlic, dried oregano, lemon juice and rind, salt and pepper.

The key is to get the hot plate really, really hot for the initial searing, and make sure that happens quickly before transferring to finish over charcoal, if you can.

A pun seemed in order: served with a proper Greek salad with barrel-aged feta, this dish was christened the Demis Roo-ssos. I'd do it again. Forever and ever.

Next, a pun-driven decision. We just had to make vindaroo. Like every recipe I've tried from Adelaide chef Ragini Dey's Spice Kitchen this is a cracker. Make a marinade, make a paste, cook the paste, add the meat and its marinade, throw in some tomato and hey presto, Goa meets Gundagai.

But don't use strip loin. Diced roo meat from the leg/rump would be better, but monitor the meat as it cooks, because it can dry out quickly.

A bit like our continent. The figures vary, but one estimate from Monash University suggests it can take up to 50,000 litres of water to produce 1kg of beef.

I don't know how much water kangaroos drink, but I don't think it's much. Do the land a favour; eat kangaroo today.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/executive-living/roo-the-day/story-e6frg9zo-1226798293884

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John aka NitroX

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Govt get out of our lives NOW!
"I love the smell of cordite in the morning."
"A Sharp spear needs no polish"

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