When Love Comes to Town

Updated October 29, 2025

“What does love look like?” asked the heart. “It does not look,” whispered the soul; “It feels.”

It doesn’t arrive with great fanfare and cannot be measured in dollars and cents, but it quietly tiptoes in and forever changes the course of one’s life. This is the story of one of its journeys.

Found by kindly folk tending an injured kangaroo, the newborn calf was lying small and still on the right side of the wrong fence. How and why, we shall never know, but what came next changed the course of his life.

At first glance, he could just have easily been mistaken for nothing more than a scrap of black plastic carelessly discarded, as sadly so often litters our countryside. But Spirit was not rubbish. Though his being had been overlooked by the world he was born into, he was not ignored by love.

For farmed animals like Spirit, the odds are rarely in their favour. Born into a system that denies their intrinsic worth and values only their economic weight, his story could have ended that day before it truly began. Yet like a weed pushing through concrete, kindness found a way.

Because that is what happens when love comes to town.

His tiny stomach was hollow with hunger and his eyes were aching for a mumma who could never answer

Spirit arrived at sanctuary with his umbilical cord still swollen from his mother’s body. His tiny stomach was hollow with hunger and his eyes were aching for a mumma who could never answer. And all our hearts could do was break with his.

“You’re safe now, little one. You’re at Edgar’s Mission,” became our mantra.

Colostrum soon swirled as an umbilical clamp was applied and a soft straw bed was prepared—and yes, even teddy bears awaited him. Blinking at the unfamiliar, Spirit began to discover wonder in this new world he had found.

Today, Spirit is a bright-eyed little fellow. An Angus calf whose glossy black coat may mark him as one destined for another fate, but whose gentle spirit has already written a different story. He has found his happily ever after, though not the one he might have chosen, for it is without his dear mumma, but the one she surely would have wanted for him.

That the curious and gentle Spirit is alive today reminds us that even in the harshest of places, hope can find a crack, kindness can take root and someone beautiful can grow.

Because when love comes to town, lives change, possibilities bloom and Spirit thrives.