It's a moving experience to observe a beautiful young wild animal and remember that you know intimate, personal details about her family tree.

Of course I'm not talking about forest trees, though there are a few notable family trees scattered around Secret Gully. Take the strangler fig for instance. It has been home and battle ground to generations of itinerant cuckoos. Every summer they come back to the ancient fig to do battle with the local gangs of magpies, currawongs and butcherbirds.

The old fig obviously loves a bit of a scuffle and never fails to feed the warring armies to keep their strength up for the fight. She herself has just about finished strangling the original host tree around which she has completely entwined. A slow and lingering death which no doubt has lasted a couple of hundred years.

And of course, up on the ridge is the ancient manor house of the great wedge tailed eagle. You can just make out some of the timber work of the old nest, perched as it is over the valley, which for generations has been the chosen nursery site for the young wedgies. Under the watchful eye of their parents, they wobble unsteadily overhead with their little cry of 'mischief, mischief'.

Yes, there are certainly some remarkable family trees in the little valley.

But I stray from my main topic. The family tree I am referring to is actually the grand lineage of Squinty, the noble Red Necked wallaby. You see after almost twenty years in Secret Gully, we are witnessing for only the second time an extremely rare event. The last time this happened was almost 15 years ago. And it's only now that we are understanding the true significance of the event. Some things in nature take a long time to unfold.

But let me start at the beginning. Almost twenty years ago we arrived with all our worldly goods in the back of the ute, nervously ground our way down the old logging tracks and proceeded to develop a new life in Secret Gully.

We camped for a year before choosing a house site, on the foot of a little hill in the middle of the valley. We soon realised that the hill belonged to an original inhabitant, an old wallaby with one eye and a squeaky jaw. We called her Squinty.

Squinty lived on a small plateau on top of the hill from where she could survey the surrounding valley floor. She didn't seem to worry about us and in fact grew quite fond of the garden and the shade that the young orchard started to give. Over the next couple of years, we observed Squinty with great respect, never trying to tame her, but working to develop a sense of trust. In that time she was always attending to a joey, with another one in the pouch. Once out of the pouch she hid the young ones in the forest and visited them at dusk.

Eventually, when they were weaned, the young wallabies drifted off to make their lives somewhere else in the bush. Sometimes we would recognise one in a neighbouring valley. But Squinty owned the hill, and that was that. Until the third year that is, when a distinctive young joey seemed to stay and keep the old mother company. We called this little wallaby 'Snubby' on account of a cute turned up nose. Snubby was a constant companion to Squinty, and together they climbed up and down the hill to the rhythm of the day.

We now realise that we were witnessing an ancient ceremony of transition happening between the old Matriach and this one chosen offspring, who was to inherit the hill and all that went with it, including ourselves and the chooks.

And sure enough, the time came when one chilly winter's morning Snubby descended the hill alone, and we knew that Squinty's time had come.

Over the last decade and a half we have observed Snubby's life with great interest and fondness. She grew from a pretty youngster into a beautiful adult Red Necked wallaby, and then gracefully moved into her twilight years. She's very old these days, and often stays in the orchard, not bothering to climb the hill. She prefers the sweet grasses and the thick shade of the garden trees. She's gone blind in one eye like her mother and is very grey haired and boney. And I think her jaw is beginning to squeak.

But over the years Snubby has been a wonderful mother. She has produced a steady stream of joeys, brought them up carefully and then sent them off to populate far places as soon as they were able to leave. Until this season, that is, when we have noticed a very beautiful little wallaby - one of last season's offspring - hanging around the hill and the orchard and keeping old Snubby company.

It's the first time this has happened for fifteen years, and we are well aware of the significance of the momentous occasion. For we have now met our new landlord, the young heir and proud owner of the little rocky hill, that lies in the heart of Secret Gully.