Rare footage of a legendary animal, extinct since 1943, shows the last known survivor of its species

Toolache Wallaby from 1936 is a film owned by Field Naturalists that has managed to capture an extinct Australian animal running through a meadow. The discovery was made possible thanks to the digitization efforts by the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA).

The digital copy of the 16mm film was mostly black and white, except for the last 34 seconds of footage. The original film was entirely black and white, but extracting a reel and digitizing it in June allowed for a visual enhancement of the ending, where what appears to be the last Toolache wallaby can be seen.

A film about the last living Toolache wallaby

Filmed nearly 90 years ago, the 34-second color clip shows the last living Toolache wallaby, a species relentlessly hunted to extinction. Bernard Cotton, from the South Australian Field Naturalists Society, understood the importance of this Australian marsupial and traveled to the southern part of the continent to film them.

The journey began in October 1936, one month after the death of the last known Tasmanian tiger at a Hobart zoo. The filming started 210 miles from Adelaide. Shot in black and white, it shows a Toolache wallaby engaging in typical behaviors like hopping, eating, and grooming.

The film’s most striking moment is when it shifts to color, showing the animal with a higher-than-normal magenta tone. The ending of the film shows four rock wallabies for comparison with the Toolache wallaby footage. Three years later, the Australian species was declared extinct.

Why did they go extinct?

The agricultural industry contributed significantly to the complete disappearance of the Toolache wallabies, but it was not the only cause. Australia is considered one of the countries with the highest mammal extinction rates in the world, according to Yahoo News Australia.

In an interview with the outlet, Peter Matejcic, current vice president of the Field Naturalists, admitted feeling “saddened” to see the newly digitized footage this year. Killing and hunting wallabies was a common pastime in Australia, a practice that ultimately wiped out an entire species.

A 19th-century diary unearthed by the Field Naturalists explains that hunting native species was a common weekend pastime on the continent. “Coexisting with native wildlife is difficult given human priorities,” Matejcic lamented in the interview.

Written accounts about the wallabies

The Field Naturalists magazine reflected on the information about the extinct species gathered from archival documents dating back several centuries. In March 1945, months before World War II ended, the magazine published a collection of the most important information drawn from archives along with reflections on the species’ disappearance.

The verified information states that the wallabies were once widespread across the continent in great numbers, even noting they “swarmed around Kingston,” at the southern edge of the famous Coorong desert in the state.

According to earlier reports, the wallabies were fast animals that didn’t flee danger easily. “I have never seen anything as swift as this species; it doesn’t seem to hurry until dogs get very close,” wrote a man who spotted Toolache wallabies in the 19th century.

When the species started disappearing, efforts were made to preserve them. However, despite attempts to keep the species alive, capturing and raising the animals in specialized facilities caused them stress and led to their rapid death. “Once a species is confined solely to zoo enclosures, its survival may come too late,” Matejcic warns.

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