And she loves it. For 14 years Ms Stepan has run Sleepy Burrows, one of only a few dedicated wombat sanctuaries in Australia, and the largest. After witnessing a car deliberately run over a wombat grazing on the side of the road, she sat with it while it died and vowed to dedicate her life to helping the species. Ms Stepan is moved to tears every time she talks about it. The animals come to Sleepy Burrows from all over. She receives wombats from NSW, the ACT and northern Victoria (those rescued in the state’s south go to Healesville Sanctuary). She cares for up to 60 wombats, from tiny pink joeys to 35 kilogram adults, at her home at any one time. Credit:Margaret Gordon

Some are joeys rescued from the pouches of roadkill. Others are victims of cruelty, have mange or are former pets. Sometimes wild wombats drop by for a snack. Ms Stepan has learnt a lot about wombats in her years running Sleepy Burrows. They aren’t nocturnal after all, she says, but live according to temperature. Ms Stepan feeds the joeys at two-hourly intervals. Credit:Margaret Gordon In the heat of summer, wombats stay in their burrows during the day, but in winter they can be seen feeding outside during daylight hours. Some juvenile wombats sleep in crates in her spare room and dining room. When they’re awake, they take over the living room.

Juvenile wombats sleep in crates in her spare room and dining room. Credit:Margaret Gordon The wombats she cares for are named in groups, after a theme. One lot is a tea set: Teacup, Teapot and Tim Tam. Ms Stepan's day usually starts at 5am and she rarely gets to bed before midnight. She feeds the smallest wombats through the night, getting up at two-hour intervals. Sometimes she gets no sleep at all. Her husband Phil Melzer is also integral to Sleepy Burrows. He does a lot of the labour at the sanctuary and has been known to lay concrete at midnight, she says, because “it has to be done”. While adult wombats are territorial, often anti-social animals, juveniles are social and playful.

Juvenile wombats take over the living room when they're not sleeping. Credit:Margaret Gordon Shoes, clothes and furniture are regularly destroyed, and they even make holes in the walls. They do nip, or ‘play-bite’, and their hard heads and bottoms can cause bruising. But there’s nothing a wombat likes more than a scratch on the behind. “The way to a wombat’s heart,” Ms Stepan says, “is through their bottom.” Ms Stepan says playing with wombats helps prepare them for release into the wild, which means her family spends around seven hours a day keeping them amused and active. In the wild they can attack, but only if they’re disturbed. “They’re not hiding in the bush waiting to knee-cap you,” Ms Stepan says. Bare-nosed (formerly known as common) wombats are not classified as endangered, so Sleepy Burrows doesn’t receive any government funding. (The operation is paid for by people who sign up to be ‘Wombassadors’, donating a monthly sum. Ms Stephan also charges for tours of the sanctuary, which have been taken by many foreign dignitaries visiting Canberra.)

The wombats spend up to seven hours a day playing, in preparation for their return to the wild. Credit:Margaret Gordon But Ms Stepan warns that a crisis is looming for the species, which she says will be critically endangered by 2030. The culprit is saracoptic mange, a parasitic mite which burrows into the animal’s skin, causing open wounds and eventually death. It’s not known how wombats become infected with mange, but it’s likely through contact with domestic animals. The mites are transmitted through shared burrows. The situation is at best concerning, at worst dire. The wild wombat population in Tasmania’s Narawntapu national park has decreased by 94 per cent in the past seven years, despite a concerted effort to treat mange. It’s now thought there are fewer than 10 wombats left in the area. Mange has been present in wombat populations for many years, but its incidence is increasing. From her observations, Ms Stepan believes 70 per cent of the NSW wombat population has mange: 90 per cent of those infected will die from the condition.

Once the disease advances there is little hope of survival, and death is prolonged and painful. On top of that, they are liable to infect other wombats. Mr Melzer regularly euthanises manged wombats whose disease has progressed beyond saving. Despite the threat to the animal’s population, it is still legal to shoot wombats with a culling licence in Victoria and NSW, issued on grounds including damage to buildings, pasture or crops. Victorian Government figures show 3374 wombats were legally shot in 2017. Ms Stepan and a team from the Queensland University of Technology have created a treatment model for wombats with mange, in the form of a ‘hospital burrow’. The hospital burrow mimics a wombat’s natural home, while keeping the rescuer separate from the animal and the wombat safe from reinfection.

Ms Stepan has also developed an oral treatment for mange, which she has so far found to be more effective than traditional topical treatments. This month Sleepy Burrows launched a Kickstarter campaign for the hospital burrow, but so far the response has been slow. Most donations have come from overseas, rather than Australia. Still, Ms Stepan remains hopeful. Her first-hand experience of raising and rehabilitating wombats has shown her how robust they can be. One wombat Ms Stepan released eight years ago visits during winter, knocking on all the doors until she’s let in for a sleep by the fire. She even lets Ms Stepan feel the joeys in her pouch. “We’ve seen wombats out there that have beaten all the odds to survive, and 14 years later we still see them out there at the sanctuary. That gives me goosebumps. It’s magic.”