Re: The Thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger
And this possible sighting?
Col Bailey is convinced the Tassie Tiger is alive.
COL Bailey claims he saw a thylacine in the flesh, writes JOHANNA LEGGATT
In the unlikely event you should chance upon a thylacine in the wilds of Tasmania, this is what you will notice: a strong pungent scent, a "yip yip" cry not unlike a Fox Terrier, and a strange awkward gait as it manoeuvres itself back into the forest and away from you, the startled human.
Shadow of the Thylacine, by Col Bailey, Five Mile Press, rrp $29.95
It may even bare its teeth to signal what you have already sensed: Tasmanian tigers are not comfortable around humans.
Which, according to thylacine enthusiast Col Bailey, is why there hasn't been any proof of their existence in the wild since the late 1930s.
Scientists have declared the species extinct - the last known Tasmanian tiger died in Hobart Zoo in 1936 - but 75-year-old Col believes they are still holding on by a thread.
Not a man to entertain foolish theories, his conviction is borne out by more than 40 years of research and that all-important clincher: a first-hand sighting of the carnivorous marsupial, which he writes about in his new book Shadow of the Thylacine.
In 1995, Col received crucial information from "Bert" - an old bushie who had spotted them in the wild in the 1950s - about where to find the remaining tigers. He was told to head to the inhospitable region of Snake River in Southern Tasmania's Weld Valley.
Col, who lives outside of Hobart in New Norfolk, and is an experienced bushwalker, thinks he may have seen a tiger while canoeing the Coorong Lagoon, in South Australia in 1967.
But he wasn't 100 per cent sure, and he headed into the dense Weld Valley to try his luck at the heart of "tiger territory".
After setting up camp, he heard their distinctive cry during the night, but it wasn't until the following morning after he had broken camp that he came face to face with one.
"I turned around and there it was, and at first I just thought it was a dog, but then I saw those distinctive stripes," he says.
"I went in to total shock and my whole body started shaking. Even if I had had the camera around my neck I doubt I would have had the presence of mind to take a photo."
He resolved at that point not to tell anyone about his encounter, for fear of hunters tracking them down.
"There remains a shoot-on-sight policy towards tigers in Tasmania among some people, simply because that is what their grandfather did," he says.
The encounter was a blissful reward for his many years of researching the thylacine and despite further searches, he never came across another one - and he doubts he ever will.
"I smelt them and I heard them again, but I never saw another one," he says.
Col hopes the publication of the book will go someway to encouraging authorities to pour some money in to finding a tiger pair and setting up a protected breeding program.
"I am not sure how many there are left in the remote parts of Tasmania, it could only be a handful," he says.
"But if we don't act on this soon, they will most certainly die out."
Asked to explain his love for the the thylacine, Col's voice softens.
"They are battlers and they are such prehistoric animals, there really isn't anything else quite like them," he says.
"To have survived what they survived, I have so much respect for them. What I would really love to do is see one in the wild, and be able to run up to it and hug it."
Billy