So I'm back from Tasmania. A wonderfully vast and varied place, and I've never seen so many hawthorn trees in my life. It’s the main European tree you see in the green fields and hedgerows for miles when you drive west from Launceston.
I'm not going to reveal whereabouts we were for that
fortnight, but we did spend time in a rainforest. It was wet, as I feared, and
I got a sore throat - I was certain it was the damp air - I did not get cold in
my trusty sleeping bag.
But there was a strange air to the place - maybe it was
because I was where the thylacine was king predator and so definite in its
existence, unlike the mainland. Also when we stood in positions where it had
been seen only a few years ago, the idea of it haunted us - so near yet so far.
For those obsessed with the creature, we sure did feel strange being there.
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We
also visited a location where a sighting occurred in only 2011, the most recent
sighting we collected from people we had met. We walked down the dirt road,
again hoping for it to reappear and listening for its ‘yip’ call. With 18
months passed, you feel too late for such viewings.
I
think that if I ever saw one, in Tasmania, or even on the mainland, then it
would not be a myth to me personally anymore. The black and white footage we see today won’t
be my only view of the movements of this animal – I would have another view of
it – my own from my sighting. The myth of it being dead and gone would
disappear and that sighting would haunt me forever, coupled with a convinced
belief of its present existence. I believe it is still out there, sighting or
not. There have been thousands of sightings of it in Tasmania and the mainland
combined, and certainly there is many more unrecorded sightings not reported by
Tasmanian locals who are blasé about it, and don’t appear to care what this
actually means. If EVERYONE who had seen one reported it, we would be inundated
with reports, too many to ignore, and too many to think that the word ‘extinct’
combined with the words ‘Tassie tiger’ is the biggest piece of bollocks ever.
I
think this footage
could be a thylacine. It certainly has the look of the animal, but does it have
the movement of it? If you’ve ever seen the see-saw way a Tasmanian Devil runs, you’ll see
how a Thylacine runs. Well, the Devil IS
his scavenger cousin…
The Roast Chicken sighting
The
‘Tigerman,’ who is the author of this downloadable book, had
a double sighting in 2002 as
mentioned here, but I can tell you more about it now – one day, on his
search for the elusive creature, he drove down a road to see a young thylacine
crossing in front of him. The next day he went back to the same location with a
roast chicken he had purchased. To lure the thylacine out, he placed the
chicken on the road. As he went to wash his hands of chicken fat from a creek
by the road, he returned to find a mature thylacine sniffing at the chicken. It
saw him and ran away.
During
the trip, we made many jokes about roast chickens. Also, that may have been the
first time ever that someone who was actually looking for the thylacine, saw a
thylacine. Mostly they are seen when people don’t expect them, like so many
other sightings of things… that and nonchalant Tasmanians often have several
sightings before they casually bring up what they’ve seen.
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| Uncaring colonialists |
And
many Tasmanians don’t actually want the thylacine to be found. A lot of people
we wanted to talk to, locals who study it for themselves, are cagey and
unresponsive when asked about it. To not share information confounds me. I
doubt many people today, who know the thylacine is seen countless times, would
laugh at you if you saw it. Most people in Tassie know someone who has seen one
if they haven’t themselves. It’s not like Sasquatch. This thing did exist once.
It’s a flesh and blood animal, is connected to the animal kingdom, unlike Sasquatch,
who may have a supernatural element to it. It should not be an embarrassing thing
to report seeing one.
Elusive
One
thing about the Thylacine that people don’t realise is that they are incredibly
elusive and shy, and will leave immediately when in the presence of a human. If
they smell you, they’re out of there. If they hear you, they’re out of there. And
it is said they have a better sense of smell than a dog. 48% of sightings are
made from a car – cars driving along the road come upon the thylacine who may
be just as surprised to see a car as the humans are surprised to see them. About
28% of sightings are made by single pedestrians, making no sound apart from
walking.
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Back
in the day of foolish and selfish farmers and colonial people, nobody made a
proper study of the behaviour of thylacines, they only really studied how it
looked. Had it not been gone for 77 years, we would have made a detailed and
scientific study of them by now – their gestation period, how many cubs they
can have (it is said no more than 4), and all other attributes of the creature.
Foolish and stupid people of the 1930s also should have kept them not in a
cage, but a large varied wildlife reserve. That may be the only way to breed them in future
if it ever happens.
Elusive
and shy animals are rarely seen and even more rarely photographed. Look at the
big cat of Australia – panthers that live in the open spaces of vast Australia
are cautious of all people. Most of these animals are extremely happy to stay
away from civilization. Some people in the past have encountered thylacines
more than once – and often leave food for them. A few decades ago, an old man
living in deepest parts of Tassie practically had a pet one that slept on his
front porch. It was still shy of people, as it left minutes before bushwalkers
arrived at the shack – it could either smell or hear them coming. This was long
after 1936.
The
thylacine makes a ‘yipping’ sound, as seen in the link above by Turk Porteous.
We met someone last week who has heard it twice in the last 15 years. He
mentioned that there was a pause in between the ‘yip’ sound. We were also told
of two locations where we might hear it at night if we were quiet enough. One
location we visited at day time, the other, near button-grass plains we visited
more than once, and once kept a night time vigil. We heard nothing. This sound does not
convince me. It’s too much like a bark. If I ever hear a thylacine, I’ll be
well pleased. There are chances for that yet, as we are returning to Tassie.
Soft organs
Thylacines
are predators, and they were really the only ones in Tasmania back in the day,
apart from the domesticated dog that lived with the Aborigines. When they kill,
they eat the soft organs. If anyone finds a recent kill, say a wallaby, devoid
of its organs but nothing else taken, then it may have been a thylacine kill.
The devils would finish it off, wiping out all evidence. Turk Porteous mentions
in that same link that he used to give it mutton. Good chance it would have not
taken it. Had he left it a wallaby dangling from a rope a metre up, it might
have eaten it.
In
our time there, we picked up road kill to use for bait for the game cameras. We
found a dead chicken. We also
got a wallaby, freshly killed, we even ate some of it ourselves (our friend Jon
McGowan eats roadkill, so he encouraged us). We also found a roadkill bandicoot, and a
quoll. We even used some of our left over roast chicken carcasses. Mostly we
got devils and other carnivores on the cameras, and picked up anything else
that passed by. The dead chicken roadkill we hung from a tree, so devils could
not reach it.
Tasmania
regrets the loss of the thylacine. It’s the one thing about the past they wish
they could fix. The Tasmanian Devil has been suffering from the spread of a
deadly facial tumour for a while now, and before they become extinct, they have
set up Devil Ark, a program that helps healthy breeding pairs re-populate. They
don’t want to make the same mistake, even though it’s not dying out because of
human interference, but a disease. Unless the disease was our fault.
With
luck, the thylacine, which, according to many sightings, appears to be breeding
healthily, may be re-discovered and be put upon an endangered
list instead.
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| Wilf Batty and the last (recorded) kill of a Thylacine at Mawbanna, 1930. We met Wilf's nephew accidently in a café while we were there, and interviewed him. The gun in this photo is still in the family. |
The CFZ are not interested in making money from any footage, photos or any kind of evidence of the discovery of a cryptid or extinct animal. Our intention in finding the Thylacine is due to a love and the preservation of the animals and their habitat. We do not plan to 'trap' the animal in any way (snares and traps are illegal in Tasmania), it's all for science and zoology, and our evidence will be free for all to see. See The Centre for Fortean Zoology's aim and intention.
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| Being cousins does not matter - you'll still get eaten |
