| BIG CATS |
Large cats have been reported in Australia for over fifty years mainly down the east coast of Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. Some people think the big cats were introduced by the American soldiers who brought panthers and puma over as mascots during world war 2. When the war was over they could not take the big cats back so they released them in to the bush land. The cats had no natural enemies, plenty of food and large areas of unihabited bushland. Most big cat reports come from the Blue mountains in New South Wales, the Grampians in Victoria and lots of scattered reports though out Eastern and Southern Australia. There were early reports of a big cat in 1956 and 1957 killing livestock in New South Wales. A farmer from Uralla lost 340 sheep to a large black cat that hunters could not destroy. the prints that were found at the scenes of the sightings usually contain claw marks. In 1975 in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, a farmer and his son were feeding thier pigs around 5pm when they spotted a large black animal moving along the fence. They both watched the creature at a distance of 300 yards for about 4 to 5 minutes. The farmer estemated the animal to be between 4 to 5 hundred pounds and stood 2 foot 6 inches high at the shoulder and looked like a black panther. They watched as the animal sprang 9 feet to clear a creek and then diappeared in to the bush. An article: The Sunday Mail / Australia / Eugenie Navarre - April 5th 1998 The recent sighting of a puma-like animal on the roadnear Cooktown has reviived talk of hundreds of unexplained sightings of big cats in Northern Queensland. The Cooktown cat was reported to be about 45cms high and 60cms long with a fluffy tail about 75 cms long with a curl on the end. Joe Meaney and his wife, Yvonne say they saw the animal about a 10kms from Cooktown. "We saw this thing on the road and realised it was a cat. It turned and leapt from the centre of the road to the grass. It was a 5 metre leap life something in the movies. It was three times the size of a normal cat and had big foot prints". Mr Meaney said the body was to big for a feral cat and was quite different from a quoll, a native marsupial cat. "People at Mt Amos (near Cooktown) often talk about these big cats and get ragged abour it, so some dont mention it when they sight them".Peter Stapley, proprietor of the Cooktoon news, photographed the footprints, which had remained on the wet ground. Mr Meaney said the animal looked something like a mountain lion, sandy in colour with darker tufts of hair coming from its pointy ears . Internationally renowned artist Percy Trezise, of Cains, has been attempting to track and photgraph the animal since he first sighted a single panther -like cat when he was only three, in Victoria. "I think there are three different types of marspial carnivors that have evolved to hunt marspials by starlight. They are seldom seen during day light," he said. Mr Trezise has a photograph taken on the Windsor Tablelands, North Queennsland, of a foot print of what he believes is a marspial wolf. He says it looks like a wolf with a kangaroo tail. Mr Trezise believes there is a gene pool of cats in the Daintree. Barb Holdsworth, who lives at the isolated settlement of Portland Roads, near Iron Range National Park, Cape York, has been documenting big cat paw prints in plaster of paris for some years. "There are four varieties with different ptints with big claws on the front paws," she said. "One is distinctive as it is a cat in every aspect but the head is like a dog." She had distinctly heard a purr of a big cat at night near her home. REFERENCES, Strange&Unexplained Happenings. Vol. 2 /Clark Jerome. Pear Nancy. / An International Thompson Publishing. |
| IN AUSTRALIA |
 |
 |
|
| By Jeff Fausch Paranormal Field Investigators. |
 |