Lieutenant-Governor Collins, in charge of the first settlement at Sullivans Cove, recognised the value of the animal. He ordered that the meat should be part of the colony’s general diet, with parts of the kangaroo boiled for soup for patients at the hospital, and the feet being used to make glue. One popular dish was the ‘steamer’ – a stew made from salt pork rations and kangaroo meat. From early spring in 1804, the Commissariat was ordered to purchase kangaroo meat for redistribution to the population, thereby establishing a cash market that was latter termed the ‘kangaroo economy’. Edward Lord and the Reverend Robert Knopwood were known to have profited from the kangaroo economy – Knopwood doubling his income for 1805 in this way. Military officers were also in a good position to buy kangaroo meat from dubious sources, such as bushrangers, before on-selling it to the Commissariat.

Kangaroos were useful for more than meat and glue. Their skins made good-quality leather, and many settlers supplemented the thin cotton clothes they had brought with them from England with warm, weatherproof garments made from skins. Thicker pieces of leather were used to make much-needed shoes. In fact, Forester kangaroos were so valuable in the first decade of colonisation that the species nearly followed the fate of the Tasmanian emu, which was hunted into extinction by 1860. The Forester managed to survive in the grasslands of north eastern Tasmania, where a population remains today.