PHOTO CREDIT, THIS PAGE: MATTHEW NEWTON; OPPOSITE PAGE:TASMANIAN TIGER: PRECIOUS LITTLE REMAINSBY DAVID MAYNARDAND TAMMY GORDON (QUEEN VICTORIA MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY PUBLICATIONS)82 Australian Geographic
Aside from these many one-off witnesses, there are a
number of dedicated tiger-seekers, both in Tasmania and
on the mainland, who spend a lot of money and time
searching for what has become one of the world’s legend-
ary creatures. A proportion of these can be said to be ‘true
believers’ who have absolutely no doubt the tiger is alive.
Some say they have seen it; others believe they have been
close, either because they have smelt its pungent scent or
heard its unusual calls. All hope that incontrovertible proof
of the tiger’s continued existence will one day surface.
And the best proof would be a live animal.
The doyen of the true believers is Col Bailey, a retired
landscape gardener, life-long bushwalker and canoeist and
author of three books about the thylacine. His most recent,
Lure of the Thylacine, was published in 2016. Col is almost- When I meet him in Hobart at the Tasmanian Museum
and Art Gallery (TMAG), site of one of the world’s larg-
est thylacine collections, he says that after 50 years of
searching for the tiger, it’s time to hang up his bushwalk-
ing boots. But he’s not short of energy for talking.
He recounts that, in 1967, at the age of 30, he was
canoeing on South Australia’s Coorong wetlands system
when he spotted a dog-like animal on a beach 200m away.
It had a heavy head, low-slung body and long tail that
seemed to drag on the sand. “I thought, what is that thing?”
he recalls. “To this day I’m not sure what it was. But it
got me interested enough to inquire about it.”
Col’s investigation pointed to the thylacine and he’s
been researching and seeking it in Tasmania ever since.
Stories of old-timers who were acquainted with the tiger
provide material for his books. So do his own bush expe-
riences, including a claimed sighting in 1995 while he was
camping in remote south-western Tasmania.
It happened one morning while he was having “a quiet
snoop around” after hearing strange calls. At one point he
saw what looked like a feral dog, but then he followed it
and got a better view. “I attracted its attention and it turned
to look at me,” he says. “My eyes ran down its back and
I saw those stripes near its tail. I knew then what it was.”
Col has been on a half-century quest to prove the
thylacine exists. So far, like every other searcher, he’s failed
to come up with watertight evidence. But he’s unfazed.
“I can’t prove it exists and the sceptics can’t prove it doesn’t
exist,” he says. “It’s definitely still there. I know.” And
that’s enough for him.
Proof and its absence are a recurring theme in an
80-page book, Magnificent Survivor – Continued Existence
of the Tasmanian Tiger, originally published in 2004 and
available free of charge online. Its author is ‘Tigerman’,
a Tasmania-based thylacine researcher who insists onSurrounded by pertinent
memorabilia and relics, author and
thylacine ‘true believer’ Col Bailey
is in his element in the Tasmanian
Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart.