Before they captured the hearts of generations of Australians, kangaroos captured the imaginations of early explorers. These curious creatures were depicted in words and artworks which seem inaccurate today, but are filled with the beauty of these animals capturing people’s imaginations. Woodthorpe’s hand-coloured engraving was published in George Barrington’s A Voyage to Botany Bay, where he described kangaroos as, ‘about the size of a common deer, of a dark tan colour… its hind legs are much longer than the fore, and with them they leap and spring forward with amazing rapidity.