Big cat tales abound in several states of Australia. From panthers and pumas to leopards and living thylacine, fervent fans of folklore will tell you that much of our countryside is riddled with predatory big cats of various shapes and sizes.
Sometimes called Phantom Cats, or even Alien Big Cats (ABCs), sightings of big cats have been reported in Australia for more than 100 years—in the hinterland of Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, in the elevated crevasses of New South Wales’ Blue Mountains, down in all corners of Victoria, and across in the southeast of South Australia.
There are plenty of die-hard believers—country folk familiar with the dark nighttime shape of a fox or feral cat, who say they can definitely distinguish a feline from the more ominous outline of a felid. And there’s substantial evidence of large unidentified creatures out there, in the form of fuzzy photographs, plaster-cast paw prints, and even some crystal-clear, hi-res video footage. But no bones, no bodies. So, no definitive proof. Yet.
Theories explaining how on earth these apex predators could have arrived in Australia seem reasonably credible: century-old records of private zoos exist, along with the knowledge of mascots brought over by American gold-miners and returned World War II soldiers.
Perhaps the most famous Australian big cat legend is the Blue Mountains panther, or Lithgow panther. Reports of a big black cat roaming the Grose Vale area, on the edge of the Blue Mountains National Park, have been prevalent enough over the years that by 1999 there were enough to prompt the NSW Government to open an active file charting the sightings.
South Australia once had the infamous Tantanoola tiger, which supposedly stalked the town in the late 19th century. In 1895 a creature was shot and stuffed, and was put on display in the local pub.
Meanwhile in Victoria, famous big cats include the Gippsland cougar and the Grampians puma. A recent sighting near Ballarat was reported on 9 News in May this year, with a video showing a big black cat bounding through a field. This was followed by a spate of sightings reported by news outlets around the state, in various towns including Dromana, Gembrook, Daylesford and Barwon Heads.
The Macedon Ranges, in Victoria’s northwest, is host to frequent sightings of big cats. Resident Fiona Ruth says she saw a large creature run across the road in front of her six years ago, as she travelled on the country road between Bullengarook and Gisborne. “I thought that it was a fox at first,” Fiona says. “But then I thought it was too big, too dark, and its tail was long like a cat.”
Self-described avid hunter and outdoorsman Blake Johnston says he saw a huge animal on the dirt track near Macedon Reservoir a decade ago on an early morning rubbish-truck driving shift. “What I saw wasn’t just a feral cat, it was a black cat the size of a German Shepard,” he says. “It was an easy seven feet in length, from tip of its nose to the tip of its tail.”
In nearby Lancefield there’s one mysterious big cat that’s impossible to miss. It’s a large steel sculpture donated to the town anonymously under cover of darkness one night in October 2015. Whether it was an attempt to put Lancefield on the map, or a simple homage to the numerous big cat sightings in the area, no one quite knows.
Supposed sightings of other creatures, such as the extinct thylacine, otherwise known as the Tasmanian tiger, are also shared among those in the know. While the last known thylacine died in captivity in Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart in 1936, the last recorded sighting of one in the wild dates back three years prior—though a study done last year suggests the species may have actually survived into the 1980s or even longer.
A recent “putrid” find in a bucket of ethanol in the back of a cupboard at a Melbourne museum may hold the key to reviving the extinct thylacine. Apparently the gross-looking but extremely well-preserved specimen contains the long RNA molecules needed to reconstruct an extinct animal’s genome. With some estimates claiming we’re seeing 30,000 species of animal go extinct each year (that’s the equivalent of four species per hour), it’s probably not surprising we’re desperate to try to bring some of them back from the dead.
And perhaps it’s our enthusiastic need to believe in the mysterious and the unexplained that fuels the dozens of big cat sightings reported around this vast country every year. It all depends who you ask. Resident Melissa Augustus swears she saw a big cat at Turpins Falls, near Langley in Victoria. And although the sighting was more than twenty years ago, she says, “It’s something I’ll never forget”.
