Chapter 2

The Early Days

In 1965 I purchased my first canoe. Initially, I honed my skills on coastal waterways such as the Onkaparinga River and along the local seafront, before revisiting the magnificent Coorong. It was there that I rediscovered a most beautiful and alluring region packed with abundant birdlife and much more. Distant memories came flooding back as I tackled it with a new-found fervour. I could now literally roam the vast waterway from end to end in my canoe, rather than gaze pensively upon its wonders from the shoreline. Occasional visits to a friend who farmed along its shores near the lakeside town of Meningie during the 1960s provided me with accommodation as well as additional information on the waterway. The ocean beach was, in itself, a most fascinating spectacle, as were the towering sand dunes that ran between the Southern Ocean and the lagoon.

Geographically, the Coorong is a long, shallow lagoon compris­ing ancient sand dunes, the oldest formed about 120,000 years ago, while the modern-day stretch of water was formed between 6000 and 20,000 years ago when the sea rose sufficiently to form an island on top of an 80,000-year-old dune. In doing so, it produced the 100-kilometre-long lagoon now evident behind the sand dune which we know today as the Coorong.

 

 

This was once the hunting ground of the Aboriginal Ngarrindjeri people. They fished in bark-and-reed canoes and built bush shelters to protect themselves from the cold southerly winds that so often swept the region. The Coorong is of considerable national importance as an archaeological area. The middens and burial sites scattered throughout its length are evidence of Aboriginal occupation over many thousands of years.

 

The magnificent panorama of the Coorong, a lagoon in south-eastern South Australia, where the author believes he had his first sighting of the Tasmanian tiger in 1967.

Author’s collection

 

It is estimated that more than 240 species of birdlife visit or live permanently along these shores, and the birds were my main drawcard. This treasured wetland habitat is the breeding ground of numerous migratory birds from the Asia-Pacific region, and as such is a birdwatcher’s paradise. In addition, there are estimated to be over 250 terrestrial flowering plants in the park, 80 of which are introduced. Along this extensive spit of sand dune reside an equally impressive array of land mammals and birds: emu, kangaroo and wallaby, bandicoot, wombats, lizards and snakes, along with wild bulls which have wandered far from their paddocks near the south-eastern town of Kingston. From the eastern end, vehicle access is obtained to the ocean beach running the whole way to the Murray mouth, adjacent to the once-busy seaport of Goolwa. The availability of numerous freshwater soaks scattered through the sand dunes allows these mammals to survive in what would otherwise be a totally uninhabitable environment.

Few bothered to visit the area back in those days, other than shack owners and local residents, most of whom probably didn’t fully realise what an absolute gem they had. The main users of the lagoon were recreational fishermen. It wasn’t until the movie Storm Boy in the 1970s that the area became famous. The weather pattern can range from absolutely tranquil to utterly turbu­lent, and for this reason boating enthusiasts always keep a close eye on the weather map. At one time I was caught by a rapidly advancing storm that whipped the usually placid lagoon into a boiling cauldron with sizeable waves dancing menacingly across its surface. The water turns black at times like these and the danger of being enveloped in a quickly descending pea-soup mist is ever-present. Two-metre waves may not seem terribly high when viewed from a normal-sized craft, but I can assure you they look absolutely terrifying from canoe-level.

***

The commencement of my quest for the Tasmanian tiger occurred quite unexpectedly during the summer of 1967. On that memorable day I came upon the totally unexpected. It was just on daybreak on a warm January morning and the waters of the Coorong were millpond-still as I arrived to launch my canoe near a locality known as Magrath Flat, some 15 miles south-east of Meningie. After parking my Holden utility by the side of the narrow sandy track fronting the lagoon, I stood deliberating whether to take a newly purchased Minolta SLR camera with me in the canoe. Finally, I decided to leave it in the car, fearing it may not take kindly to drowning should the weather turn sour and the small craft accidentally capsize. It was a decision I was to later regret.

Paddling across the lagoon towards the far shore, I steered a course about 100 metres out, from where I used binoculars to search for signs of bird life, in particular emu, a native bird that holds great fascination for me. They are truly captivating, each with a character of its own, but very powerful into the bargain; a good kick in anger from one of these large birds can cause serious injury if it connects with the right place.

Slowly paddling my way east, it was between Hacks Point and Stony Well that my gaze fell upon a most unusual sight. At first I believed it was a greyhound pacing back and forth along the water­line. ‘But what is a dog doing here?’ I asked myself, speculating whether it belonged to someone fishing along the ocean beach. At first sight it was something of a curiosity. My binoculars picked it up again around 400 metres further along the shoreline, and as I paddled on, I decided to keep the animal under observation from time to time. Although overcast, the air was warm and there was little if any wind. It was now an hour after dawn and the light was fair, heralding a near-perfect day for bird watching. At that stage I was yet to locate my first emu, and as nothing more interesting had appeared, I turned my attention to what I believed was the greyhound, half expecting to see its owner suddenly bob up from behind a sand dune.

I kept my paddle low, skimming the water in a gentle rhythm, slowly gliding the craft forward. By the time I’d closed the distance to around 200 metres, the animal appeared to be something quite different to my earlier impression: a long, low-slung creature with a head that seemed far too large for its body and a long stiff tail that seemed to drag in the sand.

I stopped paddling and curiously scrutinised this most unusual spectacle through the binoculars. The animal paced relentlessly back and forth over a 40 metre stretch of shoreline. Was it fishing? There seemed no logical explanation, but something had attracted it to that particular spot.

I sat there for at least three minutes, mentally noting the various characteristics of the animal and, to be perfectly honest, at no time did I detect an obvious striped coat pattern. The most notable features were the tail, large head and the out-of-proportion, long, low-slung body. Its colouring appeared to be a dirty yellow-brown, and its legs seemed unusually short. The greyhound appearance was mostly prompted by its rib cage, narrow belly and long skinny tail. By now my whole conception of what it was had changed.

Suddenly it slowly turned, and with a rolling, awkward gait, swaggered up between the dunes and out of sight. Although appearing to steer a reasonably straight path, its overall locomotion appeared odd, its backside shuffling noticeably from side to side, its tail appearing to drag uselessly behind in the sand. It gave the appearance of an old, weary animal, perhaps now on its last legs.

By this stage I was of the opinion that it was most likely some type of domestic dog. What else could it be? A dingo? But dingoes looked distinctly different to this creature, and it was generally believed there were no dingoes within a hundred miles of the Coorong. Still unsure of what it was, I paddled on to the spot where it had been pacing, and beached the canoe. There I was confronted with the most amazing set of perfectly imprinted tracks in the damp sand for almost 40 metres along the water’s edge. In the time it had taken me to arrive on the scene, it had reverted to an idyllic, pristine setting with cute little sandpipers flitting happily along the water’s edge as several black swans swam innocently past.

In those days I knew next to nothing about the Tasmanian tiger, let alone its footprints, and the possibility of the animal being a thylacine simply didn’t register. I stood for some time intently examining the tracks clearly indented in the sand. They were as faultless a set of prints as I could ever hope to find, and if I’d had a camera or casting plaster with me that morning, I could well have proved what had made them. But the thought never crossed my mind; I was completely oblivious of the possibility of such an animal roaming the Coorong, or anywhere else. Like so many others, I believed the Tasmanian tiger long gone. I paused momentarily at the water’s edge to watch a magnificent, soaring sea eagle busily scouring the dunes for his breakfast, before commencing to track down my quarry.

Tracing the animal’s path up through the dunes, I carefully followed the tracks down through a gully and up and over a scrubby ridgeline and on into the next gully. I noticed freshwater soaks ahead, and as I approached, the animal’s tracks gradually became confused with myriad other prints of all types surrounding the soak.

By this time the mystery creature was nowhere to be seen, and after unsuccessfully searching the immediate area, it seemed pointless to pursue it any further for I was still unsure what it was. At first I wasn’t overly impressed, more curious than anything, but the more I thought about that animal, the more I became obsessed with discovering its identity.

The Coorong dunes are an intriguing spectacle, as are the freshwater soaks, Aboriginal middens and stumpy, sand-blasted bushes that resemble miniature petrified forests scattered the length of the lagoon. The silvery, silky leaves of the spinifex grass are pronounced, as are its thick rhizome-type roots growing near the surface that help stabilise the constantly shifting sand. The water soaks are surrounded by clumps of knobby club-rushes, once widely used by the resident Ngarrindjeri people for basket weaving. As the sun emerged from behind the clouds, a red-capped plover let me know in no uncertain manner that I had unwittingly walked too close to its nest in the sand, protesting loudly with raucous cries.

After walking a kilometre or so across the dunes to the ocean beach, I spoke for some minutes with a mulloway fisherman trying his luck in a coastal gutter, before returning to the lagoon and sitting for some time, contemplating that morning’s events while watching a group of pelicans fighting for a feed of Coorong mullet from a school swimming by. That unusual animal continued to taunt me. Whatever could it have been?

***

In the nearby town of Meningie, I called in at the local petrol station on my way home and mentioned to the pump attendant that I’d seen a strange animal along the Coorong. Half expecting to be taken lightly, to my surprise he gave me his undivided attention, intently listening to my story.

‘You wouldn’t be the first bloke to spin me that yarn,’ he replied, giving me a wry smile. ‘I’ve had three blokes in here over the past few months trying to feed me the same story.’

‘Did you believe them?’ I asked him.

‘Well, one of them was a local farmer, and he’s a good honest sort of bloke and well respected around the place. I doubt whether he’d be pulling my leg, but all the same, I only half believed him.’

‘Did he tell you where he’d seen it?’

‘It was somewhere along the main road that runs along the Coorong frontage.…Somewhere out near Policeman’s Point I think it was.’

‘Did he mention the time of the day?’

‘I reckon it was late at night from what he told me, but I’m not too sure about that. Anyway, why don’t you go and ask him? He only lives down the road a bit.’

I was out of luck tracking down the farmer on that occasion, but a few weeks later I returned, keen to get to the bottom of the story. In the meantime I had done some research and secured various newspaper reports that gave the impression the animal could have been a Tasmanian tiger.

Bob was home for lunch when I caught up with him and while at first he appeared a bit shy talking about the episode, after some prompting he gradually began to open up. I was somewhat excited about conducting what amounted to my first-ever Tasmanian tiger interview, something I’d find myself doing countless times over the coming years. Although I was armed with a notebook and pencil, I was sadly lacking experience in such things, and to make matters worse, I was a bit overzealous, almost messing it up completely. But I guess we’ve all got to start somewhere, and I was fortunate that this friendly, good-natured man of the land somehow put up with me…For a time, that is.

‘I’m interested in this strange animal you told the bloke at the garage you saw a few weeks back. Now, can you tell me exactly what you saw,’ I asked enthusiastically, anticipating a good descriptive answer.

‘Well, I was driving back from Kingston along the old Princess Highway, and I suppose it would have been shortly after midnight,’ he began. ‘I was on my own and I had the car radio going to keep me company. As I remember, it was just after I’d passed Policeman’s Point that I seen it in the glare of the headlights.

‘This thing scooted across the road a couple of hundred yards in front of me. I naturally had the lights on high beam, so they picked it up in the distance. I thought it was one of those big roos at first, but as I got nearer, I could see it was smaller. In a few seconds I was almost on it, and as I neared it I slowed right down.

‘I gradually nosed the car forward and I’d stopped completely when I was, oh, I suppose only about 10 yards or so away, but by that time it was heading off into the scrub. Would you believe, the darned thing suddenly stopped in its tracks and turned slowly around and just stood and eyeballed me for, oh, about five seconds I reckon, before slowly ambling off.’

‘Can you describe it to me?’ I asked. ‘Because I’m anxious to know if it was the same type of animal I saw.’

‘You saw one too?…Whereabouts did you see yours?’ Bob appeared surprised by this.

‘It was somewhere between Hacks Point and Stony Well, but on the sandhill side of the Coorong. I was in my canoe at the time,’ I replied.

Bob looked puzzled. ‘Unless it can swim or row a flamin’ boat, I don’t see how it could have been the same animal, because that’s a fair distance away, and besides, it’s way on the other side of the lagoon!’

‘Well, maybe there are two of them,’ I suggested. ‘Can you remember how big yours was?’

Bob was a fair lump of a man, around six feet tall, early sixties, and all of 16 stone. He held his hand low on his hips. ‘I reckon it was this high, by, let’s see, oh, I suppose it would have been four feet … perhaps a bit longer with the tail. It’s hard to say exactly. It all happened so quickly.’

‘Yes, I can understand that. What colour was it?’ I asked.

‘It was a sandy colour. Like that cow in the paddock over there,’ he replied, pointing to a light brown bovine peacefully grazing in the home paddock.

‘And what was the most notable thing you can remember about it?’

‘Those stripes, oh, I suppose about a dozen or so stripes from its rump that ran along its back towards the neck. They stood out. It looked a bit dingo-ish, but believe you me, this was no dingo.’

‘How did it walk?’ I was fast becoming an expert at firing off relevant questions…so I thought.

‘On its flamin’ legs, of course,’ came back the not totally unreasonable reply. I strongly suspected Bob was getting a bit fed up with my interrogation. I still had lots to learn about human nature. I was foolishly tempted to ask Bob if he’d had anything to drink, but wisely bit my tongue in time.

‘That’s about all I can tell you,’ he continued, rather matter of fact. ‘I know a few others that reckon they’ve seen these things up and down the road over the last few years.’ He appeared to be pulling the plug on me.

‘How far up the road would that be?’ I asked apprehensively.

‘As far up as the Mount.’

‘You mean Mount Gambier?’

‘Yes, as far up as that,’ he concluded. ‘Anyway, my dinner’s getting cold. Do you mind?’ he muttered impatiently and began retreating back inside the house.

‘Well, thanks for your time, Bob,’ I shouted after him.

‘No worries, mate, no worries.’ And so ended my first interview on Tasmanian tiger sightings along the Coorong.

***

Over the following months, I returned many times to the Coorong in search of that animal, and although I never saw it again, there were many others who did. In August 1967, the Adelaide Advertiser reported a Tasmanian tiger sighting between Lucindale and Naracoorte in the upper south-east. It was only one of a number of sightings reported from that area of South Australia, but this particular one drew much media interest because there were several eyewitnesses.

School bus driver Mr R Jackson and his two passengers, students Kevin Crooke, 16, and Rosalie Anderson, 13, watched enthralled as a strange animal loped alongside their bus, which was travelling at around 26 miles per hour (40 kilometres per hour). They described the animal as being considerably larger than a fox, dark brown in colour, and with faint stripes along its back. As my research was later to reveal, the thylacine is a notoriously slow-moving animal, unlikely to exceed 10 kilometres per hour over distance, so it is highly unlikely the animal seen that morning was a Tasmanian tiger. The story did, however, prompt a further rash of sightings over coming months, and the Adelaide media were soon having a field day as sightings of Tasmanian tiger–like animals began flowing in from many areas of the south-east of the state.

I managed to track down many people who claimed to have seen Tasmanian tiger–like animals in the late 1960s in various areas of south-eastern South Australia. The rash of reports only served to reinforce my belief that the strange beast I watched along the shores of the Coorong on that January morning in 1967 may well have been the same type of animal. If these unusual creatures weren’t Tasmanian tigers, then whatever could they have been?

Fast track to Friday, 4 May 2001: I received a phone call from Keith, a businessman who had read a recently published Reader’s Digest article featuring my search for the tiger and detailing my 1967 Coorong sighting. He phoned to tell me of his own tiger sighting 34 years before along the old Princess Highway.

‘I was driving to Salt Creek from Adelaide. It was about 4 am and I was well past Meningie and on my way back to where I was working at the time at a big station called Wireena near Salt Creek,’ he said.

‘You’re the first person I’ve ever told about it, and it happened in much the same area as your sighting. After reading about it in the Reader’s Digest, I decided to ring and tell you about it,’ he went on.

He gave a graphic account of the animal he had seen that morning, and it all tied in with my sighting. He invited me to drop in and have a chat whenever I was passing that way, though I have yet to do so.

The tiger sighting phenomenon reached its peak around 1968 with reports coming from dozens of towns and localities: Kingston, Coorong, Salt Creek, Lucindale, Robe, Beachport, Millicent, Naracoorte, Mount Gambier and many smaller towns in between.

Numerous individuals set out to trap or photograph the animal, invariably without success. In early 1968, I caught up with two young Melbourne lads along the shores of the Coorong who were desperate enough to try anything to bring the mysterious creature to ground. Don and Peter reckoned they’d seen a Tasmanian tiger in the glare of their headlights several months earlier while driving along the Princess Highway between Adelaide and Melbourne. Now they’d returned to search for their tiger during their Christmas holidays. After some prompting they rather reluctantly agreed to detail their sighting, also inadvertently revealing plans to locate and capture the legendary Coorong tiger. I asked them to best describe what they had seen, and Don told me their story;

‘Pete was driving at the time. It would have been around 1 am and we were on our way back to Melbourne after attending a wedding in Adelaide,’ Don began. ‘I was sitting, listening to the car radio, my eyes were closed but I wasn’t asleep. Suddenly Pete starts slowing down fast — we were probably travelling at around 60 miles per hour at the time. I quickly looked up and asked him what was going on.

‘“Hey Don, would you just take a look at this?” he yelled as he started grinding the old Holden to a shuddering halt.

‘I looked up just in time to see this dog-like thing walking across the road about 20 yards away in the glare of our headlights.

‘I remember saying, “What in the hell is that?” Pete reckoned he knew straight away what it was, but I didn’t have much of a clue myself.

‘“I reckon it’s a Tassie tiger. A real, live Tasmania tiger, in the flesh.”

‘“How in the hell do you know that?” I thought he was pulling my leg.

‘Pete reckoned it was definitely a tiger because he’s got an uncle in Tassie and he’s often spoken to him about them.

‘“But there’s not supposed to be any of them left — is there?” I chirped. I thought he was having me on, you know?’ Don grinned.

‘“Well, what in the hell do you reckon that thing that just crossed the road in front of us was then? Take a good look at it mate…It’s still there…You tell me what you reckon it is.”

‘I didn’t have much of a clue myself,’ Don continued. ‘The incredible thing was that this animal just stood there on the side of the road. It appeared to be mesmerised by the headlights. Between the two of us we counted a number of blackish stripes running along its back and stopping near the base of a long, stiff tail. It had a big, boofy-looking head and it would have been around four or five feet long.

‘We both jumped out the car at the same time, and as we did it must have sensed we were coming after it and scooted off into the scrub. Pete dived back into the car and got a torch, and we shone it around the place a bit, but that was the last we saw of it.

‘Another car coming the opposite way stopped to see if we needed any help. They thought we’d broken down, but we waved them on. We decided to keep it quiet and not tell anybody, not even our parents. Over the coming weeks we decided to come back when we got our holidays and look for it — so here we are.’

‘How do you reckon you’re going to find it?’ I asked.

They looked at each other, undecided about disclosing that they had come to hunt the animal down. Finally Don opened up.

‘We’ve got our canoe down there in the water, and we’re going to paddle along the lagoon a few miles and see if we can come across it.’

‘Just like that,’ I replied, giving them a rather sceptical smile.

‘Oh, we’ve got a few tricks up our sleeve as well,’ said Pete smugly.

‘Like what?’

Pete looked a bit sheepish. ‘Shall we tell him?’ he asked his mate.

‘Yep, why not, he looks okay to me,’ replied Don.

‘Well,’ continued Pete, ‘my old uncle reckoned you can bring them in on bacon fat. His mates used to do it in bush camps. You start up a fire and cook the stuff. Then you leave it go cold in the frying pan and the tiger will do the rest.’

‘How much bacon have you got?’ I asked.

‘About three or four pound of the stuff. Surely that should be enough,’ Pete said.

‘Tell him about the trap,’ broke in Don.

Pete gave him a black look and shook his head.

‘What’s this about a trap?’ I shot back, alarmed at the mere suggestion of such a thing.

‘Oh, it’s just an old dingo trap we picked up in a junk shop on the way over,’ blabbed Don as he tipped open a hessian bag to reveal an ancient, rusty, evil-looking steel-jawed trap three or four times the size of a normal rabbit trap. It appeared a sinister sort of contraption, and not one that I would have liked to see a tiger caught in, or any other animal for that matter. The disgusted look on my face must have shown, because it wasn’t long before Pete roughly scooped it up and quickly shoved it back in the bag.

‘Maybe we won’t use it after all,’ he mumbled.

At that stage, I was still pretty raw myself, and in no position to either condemn their tactics or offer any sound advice on how to catch a Tasmanian tiger, but I was learning. As a trapper, my father thought nothing of killing an animal, but I was the direct opposite, a trait he often chided me for as a weakness of character. The mere thought of injuring or killing a thylacine, just to prove it still existed, repulsed me no end. The huge respect I now hold for this downtrodden creature was already beginning to take shape. Even back then I was establishing an admiration for the animal’s remarkable ability to elude capture. And I can assure you that there were many hopefuls interested in bringing the beast to ground in the mid- to late 1960s. As I bade those two young men farewell, I desperately hoped their search would prove futile.

Over the coming years, I returned many times to the Coorong, canoeing long distances along that pristine waterway, soaking up the spectacularly beautiful scenery, but I never again laid eyes on that elusive Coorong tiger. Nevertheless, the dream had taken root, and my continually evolving quest to locate the thylacine had commenced.