Man hospitalized with serious injuries after boxing-style fight with kangaroo while trying to save his dog

It sounds like a joke until you see the injuries.

In a 9News “A Current Affair” report, correspondent Brendan Crew tells the story of a north-east Victoria farmer named Col who ended up in hospital after a violent encounter with a wild kangaroo that he says attacked him while he was trying to save his dog.

The segment opens with the blunt summary: Col is “lucky to be alive,” after being “headbutted, punched, and clawed” in what Crew describes as a real-life “boxing match with a wild kangaroo.”

And the part that makes it hit harder is the reason Col stepped in.

He wasn’t looking for trouble. He says he was trying to stop his dog from being killed.

A Bark By The Dam And A Split-Second Choice

The way the report lays it out, the night starts ordinary.

Col tells the program he was down the paddock “having a beer with a mate” when the mate noticed something: he could hear Col’s dog barking. That barking didn’t sound normal, and it didn’t sound safe.

So they drove across the property toward a dam, and that’s when Col says they saw what was happening.

He describes a “big roo” trying to grab his dog, Nelly.

Crew’s report keeps coming back to the same point: Col didn’t hesitate. He says he thought, she’s going to die here, and he reacted like a lot of dog owners would react when panic kicks in.

Col grabbed a stick and hit the kangaroo with it, trying to make it back off.

That decision probably saved the dog. But it also turned the kangaroo’s attention onto him.

“Came Out Like A Bullet” And Then Everything Went Wrong

Col’s description of the attack is chaotic, but it’s clear enough to picture.

He says the kangaroo “came out like a bullet,” and the first hit was a headbutt that knocked him off balance. He says he fell over, and once he was down, the fight stopped being anything close to fair.

Crew describes the scene as something far from the cute “Skippy” stereotype. This wasn’t a friendly animal. This was a wild, keyed-up roo acting like a wild, keyed-up roo.

Col says even when he tried to get away, the kangaroo followed him and delivered what he calls a “flying kung fu kick,” then grabbed at his head. In the report, he describes being grabbed “by the head” and says it was “bloody terrifying.”

When Crew asks what goes through your mind in that moment, Col’s answer is basically: nothing intelligent, just survival. Get it off, get it off, get it off.

That’s one of the most believable details in the whole story. When your body switches into pure adrenaline, you don’t narrate your thoughts. You react.

The Injuries Were Real, And They Added Up Fast

The report doesn’t try to make this sound prettier than it is.

Col shows off injuries that look like the aftermath of a rough brawl: scratches, bruises, and puncture wounds. At one point he shrugs it off with the kind of tough humor you hear from people who are still trying to process what happened.

“Scratches are scratches and bruises are bruises,” he says.

Then he admits the most embarrassing injury – getting kicked “right in the ass cheek” – and jokes that his ego might be more bruised than his body.

But the details from the same report make clear it wasn’t just superficial scrapes.

Col says the kangaroo’s claws went through both sides of his stomach. The ultrasound, he says, showed the wound went in about three inches. That’s not “a little scratch.” That’s the kind of puncture that can turn into a major medical emergency if it hits the wrong spot.

The segment also notes he was taken by ambulance and spent hours in hospital.

And when you step back and do the math, it’s wild: a short burst of violence – seconds, not minutes – can still send someone to a hospital bed, bleeding, sore, and shaken.

The Shirt That Took The Hit

One of the stranger details in the story is what Col credits for helping him.

He tells the program he owes his life, at least partly, to his “Pilbara blue shirt,” which he says took the brunt of the kangaroo’s claws.

It sounds almost silly, but it isn’t.

In real injuries, fabric can matter. Tough material can reduce tearing, deflect claw points, and keep a deep scrape from becoming a deeper gash. It doesn’t make you invincible, but it can change the outcome.

Crew leans into that moment with a little levity, suggesting Col needed a replacement shirt after it got shredded in the scuffle, which adds a human touch to an otherwise brutal story.

But you can tell the humor is partly a pressure valve. Col laughs, but he also repeats that he was “very, very lucky.”

Because he was.

Why A Kangaroo Can Be So Dangerous

The report also brings in an outside voice to explain what viewers might not understand: kangaroos can be extremely dangerous when they decide to fight.

Wildpro Pest Control managing director Alex Krstic tells the program the situation was “unusual,” but not outside what kangaroos are capable of.

Krstic’s point is simple and important: these are wild animals, and they behave like wild animals.

He says kangaroos can be “very aggressive,” especially when they’re already in a fighting mode. That matters here, because the roo was already tangled up in a conflict with a dog. When the dog backed off, the kangaroo apparently redirected that aggression onto the next “threat” in front of it.

Krstic also highlights the part that makes most Australians quietly wince: the rear claw.

He says Col is lucky the kangaroo didn’t use its large claw to disembowel him. That’s not exaggeration for drama. That claw is designed to rake and tear. If it connects in the wrong place, it can be catastrophic.

In the segment, the basic idea is that the roo was already “keyed up to fight,” and once it decided Col was the threat, it “let him have it.”

Not The First Time A Dog And A Roo Made Headlines

Crew also notes that this isn’t the first time a kangaroo fight involving a dog has made the news.

That’s not meant to suggest it’s common in everyday life. It’s meant to say the pattern exists: dogs get into it with kangaroos, and humans sometimes jump in out of instinct, love, or panic – and that’s where people get hurt.

The show even takes Col back to the scene of the fight by the dam. There’s a moment where they look around, and the whole thing feels almost surreal in daylight. Like, this is where it happened.

And then Col delivers one of the most honest lines in the whole report when he’s asked if he got a few good punches in.

He laughs and says, “I got nothing.”

That’s the piece that cuts through the internet “boxing match” jokes. In real life, this wasn’t a fair fight. He wasn’t trading blows in some heroic showdown. He was trying not to get killed while his dog was in danger.

What This Says About Instinct, Pets, And Risk

Here’s the part that’s hard to admit out loud: if most people saw their dog being attacked, many would do exactly what Col did.

They’d jump in.

They’d grab the nearest object.

They’d try to end it immediately.

That’s love mixed with adrenaline, and it’s powerful enough to override caution. Col says flat out that if the dog hadn’t been in trouble, he wouldn’t have done it.

That makes sense. He doesn’t come across as a thrill-seeker. He comes across as a guy who got put in a nightmare situation for about 25 seconds, and those 25 seconds left marks that will take weeks to heal.

At the same time, the report quietly raises a tough lesson: loving your pet doesn’t make you stronger than a wild animal, and it doesn’t make a wild animal behave logically.

A kangaroo doesn’t care that you’re “just trying to help.” If it’s already in fight mode, it sees movement and threat and it reacts.

And once it’s on you, it’s not thinking about consequences. It’s thinking about winning.

The Advice At The End Is As Simple As It Gets

At the end of the piece, Crew asks Col what advice he would give to anyone who finds themselves “going up against a kangaroo.”

Col doesn’t hesitate.

“Don’t do it,” he says. “Just don’t do it.”

It’s blunt, and it’s probably the only advice that fits a story like this.

Because even though Col lived, and even though his dog survived, the gap between “survived” and “didn’t” can be terrifyingly small when you’re dealing with a powerful wild animal.

In this “A Current Affair” report aired by 9News, Brendan Crew documents how Col ended up with serious injuries – and a hospital visit – after being attacked by a wild kangaroo while trying to save his dog near a dam in north-east Victoria.

Col describes being headbutted, kicked, and clawed in a short, violent encounter he calls terrifying, and a wildlife expert from Wildpro Pest Control, Alex Krstic, explains that while the situation is unusual, it’s still well within what a wild kangaroo can do when it’s aggressive and ready to fight.

The story has humor stitched into it – because that’s how people cope – but the warning underneath it is very real: don’t confuse a wild animal with a cartoon, and don’t assume love for your pet will protect you from a set of claws built for damage.