Today we're going to look at an endangered species of animal. It's the brush-tailed rock wallaby.


JONICA NEWBY: It was in the late 80's back in the Snowy Mountains that Jim first fell in love with the amazing brush-tailed rock wallaby - affectionately known as the rocky.

JIM RESIDE: I mean it's cute, it's pretty it, it takes you in, you think it's bloody wonderful, but then all of a sudden it goes bouncing up this vertical cliff face and you think oh my golly, how can an animal do that?

JONICA NEWBY: And the rockies were in desperate need of a hero.

In Victoria, they hadn't been seen in years.

Jim decided in 1993 to go in search of the rare Victorian subspecies. To his horror, after three years of searching, he found there were only a dozen left.

JIM RESIDE: If we hadn't found them at that time, we probably wouldn't have found them at all, they would be gone by now.

JONICA NEWBY: Drastic measures were needed.

The Victorian rockies' only hope was a radical captive breeding program using NSW rockies as surrogate parents.

This little fella, born August 1999, was the first success. More joeys soon followed. But just as it appeared the rocky could be saved, disaster struck.

JONICA NEWBY: In January last year, bushfire swept through the Snowy Mountains. The last dozen Victorian rockies living in the wild were directly in the fire's path.

JIM RESIDE: The helicopters and the planes flew back and forth fighting the fires. They just looked down into this gorge and they said, "we're, you know, we're, we're sorry fellas but that looks like it's all over -- nothing could have survived. And, and that really tore us apart. I mean we, we just - yeah, shed a few tears. Sat down and yeah, just thought, 'well, we tried, we tried our hardest, but it's all over.'

JONICA NEWBY: But when Jim returned, to his astonishment, the gorge was, untouched. The wild rockies were still alive.

JIM RESIDE: And we couldn't believe it. Again we sat down, had another cry. You know, we seemed to be doing that a lot.

JONICA NEWBY: But with the all important captive program, the news wasn't so good.

The Canberra bushfire torched the nature reserve holding the wallabies.

Nearly all of the captive rockies were killed.

Only five survived.

JIM RESIDE: It- it was great to see them but … but again, you know, we thought oh no we've only got five animals, it's going to take us years to start it all again, get it going.

JONICA NEWBY: The captive breeding plan was in tatters. It was too risky to bring in the few remaining wild rockies.

But Jim knew of one last chance.