Blue Mountain Panther Sightings

A large cat-like creature was seen near Glenorie [Australia] recently.

The Star has learned a 12-year-old boy saw the animal one afternoon while he was walking near Old Northern Road.

The boy, who did not wish to be named, ran into a neighbour’s house and told the people there he had spotted a black cat and that it was about 1.5 metres high.

“I was walking down the driveway and I heard something in the bushes,” he said.

“I saw this massive black thing sitting. It had its tail flicking around. I got a bit scared.”

The boy’s mother said she had seen a large cat and other creatures in the property.

She said her own experience and recent reported sightings led her to believe there may be cubs.

She said all her sightings had been in the late afternoon and dusk and that the tails she had seen were different to those of a wallaby.

“I probably believe that [the panther is] out there,” she said. “I like living here but you certainly don’t do the same activities because I just think what if you’re out there by yourself and what if something happens?

“We have dogs and every so often they act a little bit strange in the way they bark.”

Premier Nathan Rees said on a visit to Penrith last year that the State Government would investigate alleged panther sightings.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily an urban myth,” Mr Rees said at the time. “There are too many people reporting sightings. Of particular concern is if there are little kids out there and there actually is one of these things.

“It’s easy for all of us to dismiss these things but if we’re actually wrong then there’s an altogether different set of scenarios.”

Hawkesbury MP Ray Williams said it was a subject that he and his constituents were concerned about.

“The Premier should make the report public,” he said.

“If [the Government] don’t release it and something happens to someone they have blood on their hands.”

Mr Williams recently asked questions of both Mr Rees and MP Verity Firth, who represents Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald in the lower house.

Mr Rees said the inquiry into reported sightings of a panther-like or jaguar-like animal was still under way.

Mr Macdonald said he had received a report from the Department of Primary Industries about panther sightings and that the sightings had been analysed and forwarded to Mr Rees.

Sightings suggest the creature has wandered from Penrith to Hawkesbury along the Hawkesbury-Nepean River and across the Blue Mountains.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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