Crikey! Thylacine Update

Australian cryptozoologist Debbie Hynes has sent along the following update to be shared with you:

There have been a lot of sightings down there. There are two thylacine "hot-spots" in Victoria. One is the Portland area – as far inland as Ozenkadnook and west as far as the Koorong, a coastal national park in South Australia, next door to Victoria. The other is he so-called Foster-Wilson’s Promontory-Wonthaggi "Triangle". The animal (thylacine?) is part of local legend, being known as the "Wonthaggi Monster", and the small country town of Foster even has a billboard on its outskirts boasting of "Coming Attractions".

Said billboard features a picture of, guess what, a thylacine. It’s hard to know what to make of it all. Apparently there have been more reports of thylacines from these two areas, which of course are on mainland Australia, than from the whole of the island state of Tasmania, their former home.

It’s firmly held my many CZ researchers that Tasmanian thylacines were released circa 1905-1910 into the then newly created Wilson’s Prom Nat Park, and also into the Portland Bay area. Apparently there was a band of naturalists known as the "Thylacine Preservation Society" who undertook the deed because it was obvious, by that time, that the Tasmanian thylacine’s days were numbered. It’s certainly feasible because, technically, the feat would have presented little difficulty. Trade between Tasmania and the mainland was, in those long-gone days, conducted by coastal sailing vessels and small steamers. There were experienced thylacine handlers available too. Thylacines captured from the wild were at that time exported from Hobart and Launceston in Tasmnia to mainland and foreign zoos. Their destinations were mainly Melbourne, Sydney, London, Berlin, Cologne and Washington (I think?). So basically the problem would have come down to a question of money & motivation: the animals were routinely shipped across the Strait and a minor "diversion" would have been easy to set up.

I’m starting a modest survey down in Gippsland right now. It’s a follow up to that out-of-place Bobuck discovery I made about 18 months ago. Hah, it just goes to show how much easier it is to attract "official" interest in "known" animals!

The survey will use my infrared cameras and I’m hoping it’ll be the biggest study of nocturnal animals that’s ever been done in the region. As it happens the main study area is the Foster-Wilson’s Prom-Wonthaggi part of Gippsland.

Crikey! I only just realised(!!) ….. that’s The Triangle! 🙂 But, of course, I can’t talk about thylacines. They don’t exist, right? 😉

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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