Rare white wallaby spotted in Northamptonshire

A rare white wallaby has been spotted hopping around the Northamptonshire countryside. The wild mammal, which hails from Australia, was spotted by horse riders in some fields at Salcey Forest, near Roade, on Friday afternoon. One of the shocked riders was Caroline Phillips, who owns the fields where the albino wallaby was seen. And coincidentally, Caroline is actually from Australia herself. "It was extremely bizarre especially with me being Australian," she said. "We all thought it was very surreal but felt so privileged as well."
Describing the sudden turn of events while out with her friends riding horses, Caroline, 41, said: "My friend Florence was riding her stallion in one of our fields at around 3.30pm, when she came back telling me there was a white kangaroo in the field. She didn't seem excited at all when she told me, she may as well have told me she saw a blade of grass she was so calm. Needless to say, I had thought she was obviously mistaken or crazy ... so I thought I'd humor her and go back with her to see the 'mysterious creature'". Heading out into the unknown, Caroline said the first thing she saw was a 'white thing' at the very bottom of her 16 acre field.

"I walked towards it for ages and had still thought it was probably a bit of plastic stuck on the hedge," she said. "Florence was adamant it was a kangaroo, I was sure it wasn't. I come from Australia where most Australians don't see kangaroos in the wild so it was not likely to happen in England was it? Especially a rare white one. I then decided to go back to the stables and get my phone and my husband. In Australia, when someone's sanity is in question there is a saying .. 'They've got Kangaroos in the top paddock'. My husband always thought I did. We headed back with our phones and the 'white thing' was still in the same place - surely a bit of plastic.

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"We walked towards it and when we got close enough we could see it was an animal of some sort, I still didn't think I was going to find a kangaroo. Then it hopped away. Luckily I was filming. We got quite close to it and stayed in the field watching for at least half an hour. We had thought it may be an escaped pet but apparently there have been sightings of wild wallabies before, but as far as I know no one has ever photographed a white one though." Caroline added: "Thankfully we filmed it or no one would believe us." In the UK there are small colonies of wallabies living in rural areas of the British countryside, including the Lake District, parts of the Peak District and around Loch Lomond in Scotland. However, white wallabies are very rare indeed.