the hunting of the Snark...I mean thylacine

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The thylacine is known by many names. Tasmanian tiger, Tasmanian wolf...well, I guess that's about all really. Once upon a time it dealt its tigery vengeance amongst marsupials all over Australia. The introduction of the dingo by Indonesian traders about 4000 years ago doomed the thylacine on the mainland and by the time Europeans discovered the country it was restricted to Tasmania. Which is where I have been. Funny that. The last known living thylacine was a male called Benjamin that lived at the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart until 1936. A law was passed to protect the species a few months later. Today it is illegal to kill or otherwise harm a member of this species. Even though it is now extinct. Or is it?

My search began in Launceston. Actually it began in Sydney, at the Australian Museum. No luck there; their thylacines are all dead. Launceston didn't seem too promising a habitat but there were plenty of signs of their presence on signs and buildings and vehicles. Things were looking up. I moved on to Narawntapu National Park. Here I found potential prey items in abundance: wombats, wallabies, pademelons. The devils were doing well here -- were there tigers here too? I searched hard and found footprints in the sand. True they weren't thylacine footprints but I had to start with something didn't I?

Down to the remote southwest I travelled. So remote that I had to take a plane. So remote that there are probably places down there that have never been trampled by a white man. I searched until I found some ground parrots...um, the thylacines could wait.

Hobart, like Launceston, seemed a little too suburban for thylacines but who's to say what sort of habitat the modern thylacine might enjoy. The grounds of the old Beaumaris Zoo sat deserted and overgrown. A metal thylacine glared reproachfully from the tourist gate.

Would Maria Island bring any hope? Many rare species have been introduced there. Was the thylacine by some secret fluke one of them? Well, no.

But, finally, I did find my quarry. I tracked him with all my mighty might and cornered him, snarling and spitting, as I took his photo. Then I let him run back into the night (or day as it happens). I will not reveal where I took the photo here portrayed, for I feel the thylacine deserves to be left where he dwells in peace and secrecy. And so ends my tale. And a fine tale it was.

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Comments

[tas]

tassielink
tassielink ticket picture is the tiger under the tasmanian blue gum leaf