In preparation for today's long journey into the Victorian wilderness, eight young southern brush-tailed rock-wallabies underwent head-to-toe health checks at Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve yesterday.
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Project Manager Ani Kunz helped the team as they weighed the critically endangered animals and checked the essentials for signs of good health - perhaps most importantly, the reproductive parts.
Measuring a male wallaby's scrotum, said Ms Kunz, was ''an indication of their sexual maturity''.
At nearly 25 millimetres, this little one called Hercules wasn't ''quite there yet''. ''But he shouldn't be far off,'' she said.
Weighing in at 3.9 kilograms, a female known as Violet was also just shy of the ideal breeding weight of 4.5 kilograms.
Convenor of the Southern Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby Recovery Team Tony Corrigan said the wallabies had to be in prime condition to survive in the wild.
''If the animal's not fit in terms of reproductive capability then you're basically wasting your time in letting them out,'' he said.
''They have to be at their maximum fitness and they need to have a good weight to make sure there's no issues at all in terms of any health issues.''
With 10 more female wallabies to join the group in the Grampians location next week, it is the single biggest release of the species into the wild under the breeding program.
Mr Corrigan said the southern brush-tailed rock-wallabies became extinct in the Grampians in 1998 but thanks to the recovery program a small population of introduced wallabies was now slowly growing in the area.
Acting senior wildlife officer Scott Ryan said the program had been a success because the government had supported it since its launch in 1996.
He said other animals weren't always so lucky because they weren't quite as endearing as the cuddly looking wallabies.
Mr Corrigan said the investment had paid off.
''The real benefit for the ACT though has been that the staff here have developed a whole heap of skills in threatened species management,'' he said.
The recovery team works with other institutions including Adelaide University, Adelaide Zoo and Mount Rothwell Biodiversity Interpretation Centre, a private conservation group based in Victoria.
The breeding program uses a cross-fostering process, placing a newborn wallaby into a foster mother's pouch so that the fertile biological mother can continue breeding.
