A MELBOURNE jogger has had emergency surgery after she was ripped, kicked and mauled by a rogue kangaroo.

Templestowe personal trainer Debbie Urquhart was ferociously attacked by a 2m-high male roo at 6am on Saturday while jogging towards the Candlebark running track near Watties Road.

The 54-year-old said the kangaroo repeatedly kicked her on the right side of her body, ripped her clothes and “threw me around like a rag doll.”

Mrs Urquhart played dead in an effort to stop the attack and escaped out of the paddocks moments after the kangaroo ran away.

She then ran about 500m back to her Monckton Rd home, screaming and covered in blood.

Husband Robert covered her in towels and rushed her to the emergency department at Austin Hospital in Heidelberg.



”He ripped me to pieces,” Mrs Urquhart said.

“He just kept on kicking into me and I was trying to crawl away.

“He left me for a bit and I thought he was going to come back and kill me.”

Mrs Urquhart miraculously escaped without any broken bones and stayed in hospital until 4pm yesterday (Sunday).

She narrowly avoided plastic surgery and received 20 stitches in her right upper arm, 10 stitches in her right shoulder, and five stitches in three places on her buttocks, along with several other nasty wounds.

Mrs Urquhart says memories of the horror attack are seared in her mind.

“Every time I close my eyes its pretty vivid, it’s horrible,” she said.

“If he had got to my stomach, I could have been killed,” she said.

Mrs Urquhart said she was determined to get over the attack as soon as possible and was planning to go back to work later today.

She said her personal fitness saved her from being killed.

“I walked again yesterday afternoon as soon as I got back home from hospital,” she said.

But she said she wasn’t going to run near the walking track and the incident was a warning to nearby residents to be wary of kangaroo attacks.