It was 1ft tall by 3ft length from head to tail. User "SoulNavigator" reported in the comment section about a sighting they and a relative had while driving: "20 years ago myself , my brother and his wife drove from Brisbane to melbourne via inland route. These were of a chocolaty-brown colourand not very obvious. Then Donna saw that its head was too large, it was too bulky in the forequarters, and the body tapered off in the hind quarters, the exact opposite of the body of a wallaby. The family set steel traps to catch rabbits/hares that were pests in the area. We wasted no time in driving to his property. Known officially to science as a thylacine, the large marsupial predators, which looked more like wild dogs . Of particular interest was that the animal that he saw had no stripes on the body, though it did have pale bands along the tail. The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW : 1803 - 1842), Sat 30 Nov 1811, p. 2. The most remarkable feature was the strange manner of running: although the animal was swinging regularly sideways, the hind part of the body made a kind of bobbing up and down movement; the impression was as if the animal was drunk, as I had never seen anything like it. "Later, on another detailed search for evidence above the gully, we stumbled upon tracks of a full-grown animal, an apparent female, alongside paw prints of a cub at least several hours old. The shape of the head, legs and body was unmistakable. Just outside the town was a small separate community called Brown Town by the locals. He suggested that what I'd seen mighta been a thylacine.". It had distinctive stripes across its back & rump, which sloped down to a long kangaroo-like tail. Source: Anonymous. What do you think about the photos? It could be found across the entirety of Australia, and even into the south of New Guinea. Standing on the road, it stayed for about 40 seconds until Scott was within 40 m of it. Exploring animal welfare, animal care, and the human-animal bond. ", I take "on occasions" to represent at least three separate encounters (viz. Ummm but then I started thinking about it you know, what was it that I saw? These were only half-an-hour old and led deep into dense forest. I believed that its hunched back was due to the fact that it was bent over sniffing the ground. It was the size of a small dingo but with an elongated, slim body and the hind quarters was more prominent. 'Tiger' now in baby mystery. The bands were about 2 cm wide & about 6 cm apart. NSW, 2289 02 4047 3986 A report made to Naturalist/Cryptozoologist Gary Opit, through his popular Wildlife Talkback radio show. Some years later he saw it again at the same time and place & then his wife saw it in similar circumstances near their house. It was long in the flank, like a horse. That morning he made plaster casts of the paw prints and also found two small teeth, apparently left by the animal. That same year, a government plant biologist saw what they believed to be a Tasmanian tiger ( Thylacinus cynocephalus ), or thylacine, from 30 meters (100 feet) away in a remote area. Id love to know., READ MORE: Unearthed footage shows last-known glimpse of extinct Tasmanian tiger. It then ran into the vegetation. We could see the shape. It was around the year 1948. As we approached the turnoff to Evans Lookout, and on the corner of the local city council water catchment fence [left side of road going south] which encloses a vast area of scrubland, we saw in the glare of the cars headlights a strange animal. A report made to Naturalist/Cryptozoologist Gary Opit, through his popular Wildlife Talkback radio show. ", Source: Gilroy, Rex. The guy on duty looked at me as if I was some sort of crank who had just reported a Martian, but at least gave me a book to leaf through to see if I could recognize the species. Mount Victoria locals were asking themselves if more than one tiger was responsible for these killings. The last close sighting was about 6 months ago and it was right by our car on our forest drive. There is no doubt in my mind that the animal was a living thylacine. We all agreed, the animal looked like a Tasmanian Tiger, body stripes and all, and about the size of a large dog. Does the Tasmanian tiger still exist? It had stripes that were not bold. Source: Cronshaw, Damon. He stopped the car and turned off the motor and watched it from 2 metres away in the high beam of the headlights as it stared at him. (2017). ", "1989, Terania Creek Road, The Channon; running across the road at night in front of his car, Peter saw a thylacine-like animal showing distinct dark brown banding across the body. The time was around midnight as they left the Country Club road into Cook Road, then turned into Banksia Road on their way home. Its tail was long and straight, resembling that of a kangaroo or wallaby. Although it could possibly be a fox or bird, when I looked up the sound a thylacine makes, it was identical to one we found on YouTube. * Its head was weird shaped with a long jaw/snout. Feral predator-free areas are being established to save a range of endangered marsupials. Before it vanished off the roadside I noticed its length, about 5ft, the body stripes were blackish and ran from the middle of the back to the rump of the tail upon reddish-brown coloured body fur.". Advocate (Coffs Harbour, NSW), 9 March. Join 1.7 Million Subscribers It was completely unconcerned by the presence of his car and he closely examined it for 5 minutes before it walked off. Christian Kropp has seen two Tasmanian tigers in the Barrington Tops. I showed him a photo on-line, and he said "That's it. The tail was thick at the base and as long as the body, was round in cross section and went to a point. The terrain was undulating wooded hillsides with ajoining farming valleys. The tail was thickly furred. They were seen shortly after by a motorist driving on Hawkesbury Road through Winmalee about 9pm, when they crossed the road to be caught in his headlights.". ", "That same year a Tasmanian Tiger-like animal, was seen by Mr Bill Forbes [since deceased] after it had just killed one of the goats he bred on his Mt York Road farm.". It was shaped like a kangaroos tail, but held straight out behind instead of dragging on the ground. Its not a dog, its not a cat. It was huge, almost one metre high. The following short blog post was posted to the A.C.R.O. It was early morning around 5.30 to 6.00 a.m. when she heard a commotion outside the house as if a dog was fighting with our cats. At the time of writing this book [2017] Thylacine tracks are still being left at this site.". I did find a not too well-preserved long heel embedded in moist soil. The tail went downward toward the ground, said John. Years later I mentioned it to locals in Wee Waa when I worked there as a doctor. Two weeks later Dennis finally saw it sitting on the roadside while driving down their road to pick up their child from the bus stop at 4 pm. Share your thoughts in the comments below or vote in our poll above, To join the conversation, please In 1961, a creature killed at Sandy Cape in Queensland was identified tentatively as a Tasmanian tiger. The salted skin of a freshly shot tiger cat was pegged on the dunny door, Max said. They did not believe that it was a dog, dingo or a fox. Unlike other cryptids, this creature was definitively proven to exist but was declared extinct when the last known surviving member of the species died in a zoo in 1936. Published January 11, 2023. Australia Wildlife Conservancy says there are only 800 numbats left in the wild, and none have been seen in NSW for more than 100 years. ", "18th September 2011, 8pm, Cape Byron; observed by zoologist Mary Gardner on the way to the Cape Byron lighthouse. It was a Tasmanian Tiger. They ranged in size from 100-130cm in length and 50-65cm in height, and. However, in 1936, the last known Tasmanian Tiger died, and the Thylacine was considered extinct. As they passed through Medlow Bath, and just past the Foy Avenue turnoff, which is a busy area, about 6.1 metres ahead of his vehicle, illuminated by the headlights and standing on the left of the highway near street lights, they all spotted a dog-like animal of Alsatian size. ", "In March 1982, a camper sighted a thylacine-like animal drinking from a creek in the Grose valleyThe camper described the animal he saw as being two metres long, with greyish body fur {coloration can vary} displaying about a dozen blackish stripes extending down the body. I searched the locality but found no sign of a body. They said there have been sightings in the Pilliga in the past. She even came in with the drawing hed done after seeing the creature. She stated No stripes, but a distinctly wild animal, reddish brown short hair, above knee-high. . It had very obvious stripes across the back and the base of the tail which blended in with the brown fur so that the stripes would not be so visible from further away. Zabloc saw an animal near the Minyon Falls turnoff on Repentance Creek Road that could have been a Thylacine. They might not be extinct after all | by Iselin Aspen | Creatures | Medium Write Sign up Sign In 500 Apologies, but something went wrong on our end. She said that its gait was awkward looking, and looked like it was loping because its front legs were shorter than its back legs, and it looked quite ungainly as it ran. In 2018, three cyclists said they witnessed a thylacine crossing the road in front of them. The largest remnant bushland in western NSW. I thought it looked a silver colour but it was hard to tell because it was raining.", "5thMarch 2006, Sunday, Left Bank Road, Mullumbimby; Elle and her family saw a strange animal in their garden close to the house and watched it as it ran down to the creek. Footage of the last Tasmanian tiger (thylacine) at Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart, Australia, from 1933. Just as we drove up the one way road a creature darted across the road. On a bike ride to the beach they had a good look at what both thought may have been a Tasmanian tiger as ridiculous as that sounds, stated Andrew. Until recently, the last confirmed dodo sighting on its home island of Mauritius was made in 1662, but a 2003 estimate by David Roberts and Andrew Solow placed the extinction of the bird around 1690. Nearby we found a pile of day-old excrement containing pig bristles and crushed pig bone. or maybe they aint.". Nobody in her family believed what she had seen until 3 days later when she was coming home with her daughter and about 2kms from home they saw the same animal run into the bush and her daughter described it exactly as Donna had seen it. The wolf-like thylacine . Gary is a one of the great people in this area knowing wildlife and ummm and so I was talking to him about it. . An anonymous report (including two separate sightings) made to REPAD: "In about 2007, 2008 I saw this creature at Bowna Reserve in NSW (near Albury 2640). I went back to England shortly afterwards but on my recent return to Australia the article by Samela Harris on the sightings of the thylacien and the resulting correspondence makes me wonder whether what we saw could have been a marsupial tiger or wolf. Farmer opens up Tassie tiger mystery. We came to some wild, hilly country covered with scrub and rocks. It was dog-sized but not thin like a greyhound. This incident followed bad bushfires in the lower Blue Mountains-Grose Valley. The tigers, or thylacines, were. ", "15th January 2003, 9.30 am, Stock Route Road, Billinudgel; Mailman Peter drove right up to a strange looking animal standing on an earth bank on the southern section of Stock Route Road, just behind Billinudgel. I write about freedom, history, nature, hypocrisy and anything that tickles my mind. It really caught my attention, and I found myself thinking about this animal for days.", "25thFebruary 2006, Saturday night, Main Arm Road, Mullumbimby; Richard sighted a thylacine-like animal on the road as he drove from Main Arm to Mullumbimby and he pulled off the road to look where the creature went. Had it fou, region, keeping to the water catchment scrub into, seen in? ", "1997, Mt Warning; Heidi described her brothers observation of a thylacine. "In 1978, he was 7 or 8 at at the time and lived on a farm near Nundle NSW. A short time later a bakery representative from the Gold Coast also saw the animal & commented to Sue about it. Suddenly we saw sitting in the road ahead an animal which at first we took to be a dog. About the edge of the swamp I found another set of "tiger" tracks. Fascinating new documents have revealed a series of reported sightings of the marsupial, which was declared extinct more than 80 years ago. From Mount Gambier or Tantanoola to the Coorong, South Australia is also a good place to find them. The coat was like a newly sheared sheep in looka short, uniform length, fawn to light brown, and very dense, not laying flat like a dog or cat or even horse coat. He described it as "clear as a day". "This led to Nulkabas Max Burke telling us a yarn about a trip to Pumpkin Gully, which he said was in the wilds out from Singleton. We sighted it again a couple of days later from a distance, and finally on the third occasion I was fortunate enough to get an excellent view of it. The animal had escaped into scrubland that extends eastward to a gully, which drops down into the Grose Valley, where sightings of Thylacine-type animals continue to be reported seen by campers and bushwalkers to the present day.". They phoned and spoke about their experience on my Wildlife Talkback programme.". It would have been great if I had been able to get even one photo of the creature.", "I was driving out west of nsw 60 km west of Balranald when I came upon a tassie tiger at 2am. 13 May 1930 - Last thylacine killed in the wild. The animal stood about 61cm off the. The first day we spooked it as we drove by a sheep carcass, which it seemed it was feeding on. On hearing from Mr Heath of some of the Thylacine sightings he had been told about, an academic at a Queensland . It had a feline-like face and a long body & tail, from snout to tail tip at least one & a half metre in length, covered with yellow tawny fur. Source: Gilroy, Rex. ", "On Thursday afternoon 28th January 2015, on a Blackheath fire trail, above a gully Rex Gilroy found a number of Thylacine paw prints in a sandy patch. 2024 Mercedes-Benz EQG EV spied inside and out, 2023 Mazda BT-50 price and specs: More expensive, up-spec manuals axed, 2023 Hyundai Kona hybrid, petrol detailed ahead of mid-year Australian launch, Virgin Australia flight attendants top tips for nervous travellers and the seats they need to book. It stopped for a second as I approached, looked towards me, then quickly left the road into scrub. "'There is no evidence to confirm the thylacine still exists. Yet how did the animal get where it was seen? The discovery of the carcase in the area of Eucla, and my observation of the live specimen, convinces me that the animal still exists on the mainland of Australia.". All times AEDT (GMT +11). The owner remarked that they would have to kill the animal as he would not allow a monster to live on the farm. More from Local News An anonymous report made to REPAD by a male witness: "I was driving home from work along Freemans drive about 3km from Freeman's waterhole at approx. It had mousy-brown body fur, and blackish body stripes that extended from the mid-back to the rump of the tail on a greyhound-like [ie thin] body. It had a rigid tail. The moon was in the clouds with a bit of moonlight shining down. This animal's head was dog-like, but its ears were shaped somewhat like a cat's. It's also. It had a long thin tail about the length of its body. It looked just like that". Two km to the south-west of the Green Frog Caf & general store he and a friend saw in the car headlights an unusual animal cross the road 6 to 12 metres in front of them. "Rex claimed he saw a thylacine on Tuesday, February 22, 1972 at 10.15pm on the Great Western Highway, south of Blackheath. However, there have been many unconfirmed encounters with Tasmanian tigers since Benjamins death in 1936. It walked, going from tree to tree, looking up into the trees. The only thing I found that approximately resembled the creature were pictures of marsupial cats, with the obvious difference that the creature I sighted had dark stripes, not white spots. But what made the creature quite distinctive was the dark body with stripes on the sides, not too dissimilar in fact to the pattern of a Thylacine. *It had strong powerful hind legs*smaller front legs*A long stiff tail that pointed straight out. The head, he observed, appeared too big for the body, and from the mid-back to the tail rump were faint black coloured body stripes.". Another search of the farm and its surrounds failed to turn up anything new, and the creature did not return.". He had seen the animal in the glow of the car headlights when at a sharp bend. Please note that I have taken the liberty of quoting liberally from all sources. It was illuminated by the headlights of my car approximately 20 m in front of me. "8th February 2006, Thursday morning between 5.30 and 6.00 am, Mullumbimby; my 23 year old daughter Shanti saw what she believed to be a thylacine. Two of the men who hounded the above woman out of town, who later saw it themselves. It was about 5ft [1.53m] in length from head to tail, whichwas stiff with no point. The animal, he said, was a good 6ft [1.83m] length from nose to tip of tail, and stood about 2ft off the ground on all fours. The tail was long and stuck straight out behind it. It was not a dog; it was larger than most dogs and had a barrel-shaped body and brown fur. It then chased one of them across the neighbours garden. We live in Upper Wilsons Creek and our property backs onto Mt Jerusalem National Park. Source: Lubbock, Adelaide. During the course of our search we uncovered a sandstone shoal containing water pools with ancient Aboriginal stone axe grinding grooves, and a rock shelter containing surface stone flakes manufactured around 6,000 years ago. Various reported sightings may be the key to finding the thought-to-be-extinct Tasmanian tiger, formally known as Thylacinus cynocephalus or, the thylacine. Victorian Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger) Sighting Reports Reports from other states and countries can be accessed here. Later, above the gully, during a detailed search for more evidence we came across tracks of a full-grown animal, an apparent female, beside which were the smaller tracks of a young cub. Source: Gilroy, Rex. Of course, this is primarily due to humans taking over the world. It was dog-like and about the size of a full-grown Alsatian, with fawn coloured body fur and a row of blackish body stripes extending barrel-wise from mid-back to tail-rump. The Tasmanian tiger is still extinct. ", "September, 2005, 7am, Billinudgel Nature Reserve; on the trail that runs parallel to the beach several hundred metres north of the central trail entrance into the reserve. Its body looked roundish and the head appeared out of proportion to the body with massive jaws.". The monster's screams, according to one local resident, were like "a woeful cough that goes on and on, like a human being on their death bed". The striped-bodied animal was too large to have been anything else. After shaking our heads in disbelief, we were the ones who left, having finished our fishing and as we left we were able to see it walking around in the distance.", "Also around this time, Russel and Michael were walking within the Brunswick Valley Nature Reserve near the flying fox colony and both independently observed thylacine-like animals, one slinking past in front of them & one apparently following them. This included comprehensive surveys along the west coast of Tasmania, investigations of sightings, installation of automatic camera stations, and the creation of an expeditionary research team. Black and white footage of Benjamin recorded in 1933 would become historically significant as the final images of the final Thylacine. Dr. S. J. Paramanov saw a thylacine at 11am along theBourke-Wanaaring Road, while collecting insects close to the road (Paramanov, 1968). The swamp is surrounded by dense scrub at the foot of a deep gully encased by steep cliffs. It seemed to be stationary for a second or two as it was down the end of a long stretch of road so I managed a pretty good look. After telling our family one day, our daughter and son-in-law said they also believe they had seen the same animal crossing xxxxx Rd, in the same area one evening. She stated that it looked funny and very skinny and moved weird-like. Both times it was too difficult to see it properly, because it was travelling so quickly. Like you're listening, you're looking, and you're identifying attributes of the animal. A short time after she saw the animal, while talking to her neighbours, she was surprised to find that three of them had also observed an animal of a similar description. Most recently, in July, a man just south of Hobart reported seeing a footprint that seemed to match that of the Tasmanian tiger. Golf Course, towards its junction with Cliff Drive. ", Source:https://web.archive.org/web/20070607040632/http://www.tasmanian-tiger.com/forum/Forum3/HTML/000012.html, "1992 Ewingsdale; Tony saw a creature on a bright and sunny mid-morning 50 metres away that he was at a total loss to identify. This time I was traveling with 2 friends at around 2.30am in the morning and we were driving through the middle of Loch Sport with the lights on high beam when we saw a thylacine, slightly larger than a fox cut across about 20 metres in front of the car. The stripes were, she said, wider at the top and narrowed to a point and extendedhalf way down the side of the body. So we see lots of normal Australian little animals. I looked it up on the internet and it did look like the pictures of thylacines but with no stripes. According to Mr Pereira the animals body fur was a light brown colour with dark stripes along its body and it had a long thin strait tail which it did not wag.". Source:Gilroy, Rex. ", "Early 2008 late 2007, Repentance Creek Rd at the Minyon Falls turnoff. (2017). "The same type of animal was seen killing a sheep in Megalong Valley in January 1987. Passing the Titania Motel [Oberon] sign at the Oberon turnoff, he spotted an animal with black body stripes the size of a large dog, as it ran across the Jenolan road from left to right into bush. Don was thinking that it looked like a thylacine without stripes & then everyone began asking each other what it was & wondering whether it was a Tasmanian Tiger. ", "On 3rd January 1980 I received a phone call from a Mr Roger Handly and his wife. Each time it was in the same area, crossing the same road xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, heading into a sugar cane field. Both were of a buff colour with distinctively rounded ears, hunched backs and remarkably long thin straight tails. Tasmania's Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment (DPIPWE) revealed there have been eight reported sightings of the Tasmanian tiger in the past three years. "In February 1977, in the Kanimbla Valley north of Megalong, Mr Kevin Cummings was driving out of the valley one day when, as his vehicle passed a tall embankment, he saw ahead of him, what he immediately recognised to be a Thylacine, run across the dirt road he was on and up the embankment.