Thylacine Fever in the Wonthaggi District

     In my last post, I documented the "monster" which frequented the environs of the South Gippsland town of Wonthaggi in the years 1955 - 7, and for which I attempted to provide a mundane explanation. Of course, it didn't end there. No, I shan't impose upon you a transcript of the whole 86 additional photocopied pages - some bearing two separate articles - which my friend, Paul Cropper sent me. Sufficient it is to say that, on October 9, 1958 the same newspaper, the Wonthaggi Express announced the return of the monster. Then began a series of reports, all of which are consistent with rather large dogs, all different from the original "monster", and mostly from one another. But on December 18, 1962 something new was introduced: the witnesses claimed they had seen a Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus), a species which officially became extinct in Tasmania in 1936, and on the mainland about 3,000 years ago, with the arrival of the dingo. Gradually, but not immediately, this identification became more common, until the 1980s and 1990s, when it tended to be used indiscriminately and uncritically for most strange animal sightings.

At Last, the Double-Headed Bunyip of Tuckerbil Swamp!

     Now that the National Library of Australia has digitalised a vast quantity of old newspapers and magazines under the title of Trove, I've been able to discover the originals of very old "bunyip" reports, and I published them in my post of July 2013. However, the weirdest story of all still eluded me: the "bunyip" of Tuckerbil Swamp, near Leeton, which was supposed to have been able to swim in either direction because it had a head at either end. So, at the end of that post, I asked if anybody knew of the original source.
     It turns out nobody did, but just recently I received the following e-mail from a Mr. Brian Marsden:

I grew up 2 km south west of Tuckerbill Swamp  [ 34 deg 29 min S ; 146 deg 21 min  E ] and yes remnants of  the swamp remain. Family history has it that the Bunyip in Tuckerbill Swamp was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald (?) at the time. The source of the report was supposedly attributed to my grandfather who had taken up irrigation land nearby in 1914. Within the family, the so-called Bunyip was attributed to the bellowing of a bullock stuck in the mud of Tuckerbill Swamp. If you can find the original report, I'd be most interested.

      Well, I had performed a thorough search last year before the original post, but I now gave it one more try. And this time I succeeded. Perhaps the relevant local newspaper had just been digitalised in the interim.

The Wonthaggi "Monster"

     Of all those researching mystery animals in Australia, none is more energetic, or more generous, than my friend, Paul Cropper, the co-author of Out of the Shadows and The Yowie. In 1998 he sent me, out of the blue, a package of 106 - yes, 106! - photocopies of newspaper reports, covering 34 years, concerning the "Wonthaggi Beast". Anyone who has ever tried it will appreciate how tedious and time consuming such a task would be - especially with regional newspapers in a different state to his own. (Wonthaggi is a town in east Gippsland, 132 km southeast of Melbourne, at 38° 36'S, 145° 34'E.)
     Paul is a busy man, with not enough disposable time to publish it all on the internet. I, on the other hand, have more time, but to publish the whole 106 articles would merely bore the reader without edifying him. However, as a tribute to my friend, and for your edification, I shall publish the initial, most informative reports, along with the later ones which show some promise. It will also be interesting to note how public perceptions changed over the decades.
    These reports are all from the now defunct Wonthaggi Express.

A Thylacine in North Queensland?

    Black panthers, cougars, even big, hairy apes roaming the Australian bush: that I can handle. But I confess that what I find most perplexing are the reports of thylacines, or Tasmanian tigers on the mainland. The extinction of the thylacine has left an open wound in the Australian psyche. The three species of bandicoots and six species of wallabies which have gone the way of the dodo in historical times have hardly ruffled the public consciousness - let alone all those whose ranges have contracted to tiny enclaves, often on off-shore islands. Indeed, as far as the central hare wallaby is concerned, it is unlikely anyone but a real specialist has taken notice. It is known to science by only a single skull presented in 1932 by the only white man ever to see the living animal.
     But when the last official Tasmanian tiger passed on in 1936, the whole nation was aware of the tragedy. The thylacine can be found depicted everywhere in Tasmania: on its coat of arms, on Government department logos, on its beer. Countless expeditions have set out in search of it. Many people still believe it clings to existence. Almost everybody hopes it does. But what is really confusing are the reports which keep cropping up from odd corners of the mainland, where it is supposed to have been extinct for several thousand years. There exists a sort of "thylacine fever" in some areas, and every brindled dingo, mangy fox, or otherwise aberrant carnivore is uncritically labelled a thylacine. By now I refuse to take such claims seriously unless they are very detailed and well documented. The trouble is, some of them are.

Strange Striped Animals in North Queensland

     Alleged big cats are not the only mystery predators reported from north Queensland. Some of them have stripes, and a blanket explanation for all of them is not immediately obvious. Nowadays, witnesses and journalists tend to leap to the conclusion that they are thylacines, extinct for several thousand years on the mainland and officially extinct in Tasmania. In most such cases, the resemblance to a real thylacine is far from exact, and an identification as a brindled dingo, or some sort of mangy dog would appear more appropriate. However, every now and then the word "stripes" occurs in the same account as "cat", and if there is one thing the average Australian knows it is the difference between a dog (long faced) and a cat (short faced). Some, I am convinced, are overgrown (sometimes much overgrown) feral tabbies. But just the same ...

More Big Cats in Far North Queensland

     Last month I described sightings of apparent big cats in North Queensland, mostly as reported in letters I had received in response to my book, Bunyips and Bigfoots. This time I shall record information I received predominantly by telephone through other leads. These are essentially from Cape York Peninsula - which means we are getting sightings all the way along the coast from southwest Western Australia almost to the northernmost tip of the east coast. I am not at all certain that all of them are cats, but it is clear that a lot of them are, and it is rather frightening.

Big Cats in North Queensland

     As readers of this blog will be aware, the presence of Alien Big Cats, mostly black, is no longer confined to the southern states of Australia, but is fully established in southeast Queensland. (If you are new to the site, you may care to check my posts of June and December 2013, and January and April of this year.) I would like to be able to say that this disastrous spread of a mysterious invasive species is limited to the southeast, but that would be false. They are well and truly established in north Queensland, more than 1,200 km away. Let us have a look at a few cases.

The Original Deception Bay "Monsters"

     Deception Bay is not far from where I live, but I can never hear the name without thinking, "monster". The reason is that the first time I heard of it was in 1960, not long after I came to Brisbane as a boy, and a local Sunday paper, the Truth (now defunct) carried stories about the mysterious visitor. In my post of August 2012 I called it the best documented "sea serpent" sighting in Australia. I wrote about it in the former journal, Cryptozoology, and in a more condensed form in my book. But one of the good things about the internet is that you have more space to provide the full text of all the documents, so here goes.

Still More Big Cats in Southeast Queensland

     In my January post, I quoted a letter from Bruce Thomson, a senior conservation officer with the  Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service. I contacted him, and he sent me a follow-up letter dated 28 April 1997. Here, then is the text of letter, except for the names of the witnesses, which I have deleted to protect their privacy.

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Journal of Cryptozoology, volume 2

     I have just finished reading volume 2 of The Journal of Cryptozoology, which was dated December 2013, but whose publication was slightly delayed. Being both inexpensive, and the only peer-reviewed scientific journal devoted to cryptozoology, it really ought to be on the to-read list of everybody interested in the field.  (I might add that I am left to speculate as to who is who does the reviewing. Normally, prospective papers are sent to whomever looks like they might possess an expertise in the field. I myself was once asked to review a short paper on koala behaviour, because I had already published on the subject. However, in this case, they would need to find experts who would also be prepared to treat the subject of cryptozoology seriously.)
     In any case, it is clear that the journal is shaping up to solid professional standards, with four excellent papers covering 65 pages of text.

     The first was entitled Three remarkable tales and two challenges for anthropology - an evaluation of recently reported eyewitness accounts of unidentified hominoids from Flores Island by Gregory Forth, a cultural anthropologist who has been studying the societies of the Indonesian island of Flores since 1984. In the process he became intrigued by the folklore concerning small, usually hairy "wildmen", first of all in Flores, then in the remainder of Indonesia, and finally in mainland southeast Asia itself. Here is a review of a recent book he wrote on the subject. Then, of course, in 2004 came the discovery of the fossil remains of the "hobbit", Homo floresiensis, a diminutive offshoot of the human family tree which could, theoretically, give rise to such legends, especially since there is disputed evidence that it may have survived until little more than 6,000 years ago.

Video of Speech at Geelong

     In my post of September 2013, I gave the text of my speech at the Wool Museum at Geelong about bunyips and sea serpents in the local area. The video of the speech is now available, and Dr Waldron has kindly added it to Youtube. You can access it here. Unfortunately, it does take a while to upload.
     If you click on the button underneath to subscribe to David Waldron, you will also be able to access the speeches of the other two speakers: Simon Townsend, and Dr Waldron himself.

The Year of the Sea Serpents, 1934

     1934 was a very good year for sea serpents. Over a period of three months, they put in appearances all up and down the east coast of Australia. Much of the information has been published before, but now Trove has made it easier to uncover the original articles and provide full details. So let us start in chronological order.

More Big Black Cats in Southeast Queensland

     In my last post, I described sightings of what appear to be "black panthers" in southeast Queensland. They mostly involved witnesses I had interviewed by telephone. This time, it will be necessary only to quote the witnesses' own words from their detailed letters.
     We shall start with Toowoomba (27° 30' S, 151° 57' E), the large city on the top of the Great Dividing Range, just west of Brisbane. The letter was dated 26 March 1997, and it was originally addressed to another cryptozoologist, but I have since contacted the author. His name is Bruce Thomson, and his credentials are obvious.