Waking up in her rooftop tent camped in the Aussie outback, Sienna Mallon did not expect to see a donkey roaming her campsite.
“I looked out, and there’s two donkeys sitting in the camp. They’re pretty interesting little things,” she told Yahoo News Australia this week.
“Apparently, they’re terrible for stealing things from people. They stole one of my shirts and tried to take our map book.
“They took a bag of baby wipes and pulled all the baby wipes out as well. It’s bloody nuts”.
The 28-year-old made the three-hour drive from Katherine to Daly Waters in the Northern Territory, where she spent the Easter long weekend with friends. It’s a famous and popular pitstop for travellers doing a lap of Australia.
While it’s “very common” for rural pubs and pitstops to “have their own crocodiles or turtles or parrots,” Sienna said she was “surprised to see donkeys” roaming freely around the camp.
Sienna was camping in Daly Waters, NT when she woke to a donkey outside her tent. Source: TikTok/siennamallonn
The quirky tourist stop is well known for its donkeys, horses and goats that wander through the Daly Waters Pub.
The donkeys, thought to be originally part of a feral herd in the NT, have been part of the Daly Waters community for years. Now, they’re more like “residents” of the pub, Sienna said.
“These donkeys can literally go wherever the hell they want, but why would they when they’re getting the attention that they get at the campground?” Sienna said.
“They stuck around for a little bit, then they wandered off, and then we were having a beer at the pub, they walked into the pub and drank out of the dog water bucket.”
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Daly Waters’ resident donkeys stun tourists
Travellers often share their surprise online after an encounter with a donkey when visiting Daly Waters.
“Two horses and a donkey in the Daly Waters pub today. Certainly wasn’t expecting to see that,” one shared after visiting previously.
While someone else said their donkey encounter at the pub had them “laughing”.
“Daly Waters is such an interesting place to see in quite literally the middle of the outback,” Sienna added.
Wild donkeys a ‘serious threat’ to Australia
There are thought to be between two and five million feral donkeys living in the country, according to the Centre for Invasive Species Solutions. They are a serious threat to the natural environment.
Invasive animal species are responsible for the highest number of animal extinctions in Australia. Donkeys are known to trample native vegetation, destroy infrastructure and increase erosion of soil and waterways.
Last year, a couple spoke of their encounter with a herd of wild donkeys which they spotted in Victoria’s northwest, much further south than their usual range.
At the time, Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation at Deakin University, Euan Ritchie, told Yahoo they can be pretty problematic.
While those in Victoria are thought to have escaped from a nearby property, herds of wild donkeys are known to roam free in other remote parts of the country.
They’re primarily found across the arid and semi-arid regions of the northern half of the country, including the Kimberley and Pilbara regions in Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
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