Out of The Dreamtime - Search for Australias Unknown Animals  Book Cover

Queensland Striped Tiger
Striped Queensland Tiger © Rex Gilroy 2006

 

The Queensland Tiger, sketch by Rex Gilroy based upon eyewitness descriptions.

Sketch copyright © Rex Gilroy 2006.

Out Of The Dreamtime
The Search for Australasia’s Unknown Animals
Book Contents
Dedications
Special Dedication
Dr Bernard Heuvelmans
Acknowledgements
Preface
Monsters in Our Own Backyard
Foreword
What is Cryptozoology?
Introduction
A Night in the Australian Bush
PART ONE
Setting the Scene. “In the Beginning”
CHAPTER ONE
Enigma of the Bunyip
CHAPTER TWO
Dawn Life of the Dreamtime
PART TWO
Enigmas Of The Insect/Spider World
CHAPTER THREE
Insect Mysteries
CHAPTER FOUR
Migration Mysteries
CHAPTER FIVE
Giant Spiders of the Australian Bush
PART THREE
Lions and Tigers of the Australian Bush
CHAPTER SIX
The Tasmanian Tiger – Lost
and Found
CHAPTER SEVEN
What is the Queensland Tiger
CHAPTER EIGHT
Australia’s Mysterious Marsupial Lions – Meat-Eaters of the Miocene
CHAPTER NINE
The “Australian Panther” – Big Cats of the Bushland
CHAPTER TEN
Living Mega-Marsupials?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Devil dogs of the Dreamtime
PART FOUR
Fishy Tales
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mega-Sharks of Oceania
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A Coelacanth Found on an Australian Beach and other “Fishy Mysteries”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A Menagerie of Monsters
PART FIVE
Reptilian Nightmares
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Giant Sea Serpents of Australasia
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Giant Snakes -Nightmares of the Bushland
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Crocodiles-Dinosaurian Man-eaters of Australia’s North
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Australia’s Lizard Giants
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Megalania – Mega Monitors of the Australian Bush
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Secret of Dinosaur Swamplands
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Beware of Burrunjors in the Bush
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Pterosaurs Over Australasia
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
New Guinea’s Fabulous Neodinosaurs
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Plesiosaur Mysteries of the South Pacific
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Australian Plesiosaur Mysteries
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Longneck Tales of the Georges River
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Search for the Hawkesbury River Monster
PART SIX
Feathered Giants
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
Living Feathered Fossils
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
Moas Survive in New Zealand?
The Search for the Scrub Moa
CHAPTER THIRTY
Giant Eagles of the Blue Mountains
PART SEVEN
Manbeasts of Australasia and Oceania
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
Australia’s Unknown Miocene Primates
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
Dawn Hominids of the Dreamtime
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
Homo erectus and the Giants
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
Gargantuan Hominids of the Dreamtime
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
The Hairy Man Dreamtime Australia
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
Historical Accounts of the Yowie
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
Hairy Men of the Blue Mountains
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
The Yowie-Hominid Mysteries of
the Australian Outback
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
In Search of Little Hairy Men
CHAPTER FORTY
In Search of the Rexbeast
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
Hairy Devil-Men of Melanesia
CHAPTER FORTY TWO
Moehau and Matau – Manbeasts
of Aotearoa

PART EIGHT
Conclussion

CHAPTER FORTY THREE
The Search for Mysterious Animals – Advice for Future Cryptozoologists.

Appendix
Save Our Butterfly Species!

Notes
Bibliography


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Out Of The Dreamtime - The Search for Australasia’s Unknown Animals
by Rex & Heather Gilroy Copyright
© Rex Gilroy 2006

No part of this publication including all photographs and illustrations may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review, written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast.

Dedication

This book is affectionately dedicated to my loyal, supportive and dedicated wife, and Number One researcher and fieldworker, Heather. This book is also affectionately dedicated to my late father W.F. [Bill] Gilroy [1904-1996], whose tales of his native Scotland and the Loch Ness Monster, led me, from about the age of five [!] to my lifelong research of the natural sciences and the fields of Cryptozoology and relict hominology, which has resulted in this book.

PART THREE

LIONS AND TIGERS OF THE AUSTRALIAN BUSHLAND
__________

CHAPTER SEVEN
What Is The Queensland Tiger

If generations of eyewitness accounts are correct, the jungles of northern Queensland are the home of yet another, striped-bodied marsupial carnivore. Sightings of these mystery animals have also been reported from other, widely scattered localities further south. Yet there is something different about this “Queensland Tiger” which sets it apart from its better-known striped Thylacine cousin - it climbs trees, from where it leaps upon passing prey!

Traditions of the former forest dwelling Aboriginal people of the Atherton mountain range inland from Cairns, preserve traditions of these carnivores dating back to the ‘Dreamtime’. Early settler’s tales are many and in the Cairns-Atherton-Cooktown districts these date back to the mid-19th century.

One report concerned a police magistrate based at Cardwell, south of Tully, Mr Brinsley Sheridan, who together with his son was walking with their pet terrier along a track near the beach of Rockingham Bay, on the evening of August 2nd 1871. The dog caught a scent among scrub and dashed off into the bush barking furiously. The son pursued his pet through the scrub for up to half a mile until, catching up with him, he found it had its quarry at bay in long grass.

“The animal was”, he said later, “as big as a dingo, with a cat-like face. It had a long tail, its body had black stripes with yellow fur”. The terrier attacked but was soon forced back. The ‘tiger’ then dashed up a nearby leaning tree while the dog continued barking at it. The strange creature then dashed back down the tree, past the boy and the dog, escaping into nearby scrub.

Mr Sheridan later learnt of earlier incidents involving ‘tigers’ which had occurred in the Cardwell district. For instance, on December 4th 1871, Walter J Scott informed him that six men working near the Murray and Mackay Rivers north of Cardwell, where woken up one night in their tent by a “loud roar”. Leaping from their tent, firearms in hand, they searched the area for the mysterious intruder but found nothing. However, the next day they discovered the tracks of some large animal about their campsite.

In the valley of Lagoons, west of Cardwell, on June 5th 1872, a native police officer, Robert Johnstone, in the company of several other police officers, spotted in dense scrub a large animal perched about 40ft [about 12.2m] above ground on a tree limb.

As the men approached it, the animal suddenly leapt from its perch about 10ft [about 3m] into another tree, clung to it, then slithered down the trunk tail first to escape. The men observed the creature to be larger than an average pointer dog, its body fur being of a fawn colouration with darker markings [ie stripes], and a long thick tail.

In 1896 an Atherton farmer, Mr Tom French, had been losing calves, sheep and goats to some mystery creature that raided his property day and night. Despite searches with cattle dogs he had been unsuccessful in finding the carnivore, which left telltale large paw prints in muddy patches around his property, which lay on the edge of dense scrub.

One day, from his kitchen window, he observed a strange animal, a little larger than a fully-grown German Shepherd Dog, with greyish-coloured fur and darker coloured body stripes, dash across the paddock barely 50ft [15.24m] from his window, to pounce upon a calf, grabbing it by the throat.

By the time Tom had grabbed his rifle and dashed outside, the animal was gone. Looking towards scrub in the direction from where the animal had first appeared, he saw the powerful beast dragging its ‘kill’ toward the trees.With his two teenage sons he was soon in the scrub in pursuit of the animal. Entering a clearing they saw the creature, perched on a gum tree limb some 20ft [6.1m] from the ground, where it had wedged the calf’s body between the trunk and the limb. Tom raised his rifle and the animal was brought down with a single shot. Tom later skinned the animal but the eventual fate of the hide is not known.

About 1904 another farmer, Adam Donaldson, is said to have found the rotting carcass of one of his sheep, wedged high above ground in the fork limbs of a tree on his property at Ravenshoe south of Cairns.

Similar stories continue to the present day. In 1991 a young trail bike rider, Don Moss, exploring a scrubland track west of Townsville, surprised a large, fawn-coloured animal with black body stripes, which leapt from a tree ahead of him at his approach, to bound off into scrub. As he reached the tree, Don saw a dead goat, wedged in the fork of a limb about 15ft [about 4.58m] above the ground where the creature had been feeding upon it.

The author has heard many similar reports from Queensland’s far north, but tales of the notorious “Queensland Tiger” or “Tiger Cat” are not confined to that region by any means. I have heard of sightings from widely scattered farming areas outside Mackay, Rockhampton, Gympie and Murgon as well as from scrubland locations west of the coastal mountain ranges.

The ‘tiger’ has been attacking stock, killing calves, sheep, goats and poultry in the Chinchilla, Taroom, Emerald, Charters Towers and many other areas for generations.

So what is this “Queensland Tiger Cat”?

Fur colour descriptions vary from grey, fawn to ochre, but all accounts describe darkish body stripes. It cannot be confused with the better-known Thylacine because of its frequent habit of wedging the bodies of its ‘kills’ high up in the forks of tree limbs, and most eyewitness reports describe its almost feline-like features.

There can be no doubt about its marsupial status. Until a living or deceased specimen can be produced for the perusal of scientists, its exact position in the marsupial family will remain unestablished; although my scientific colleague, the late Dr. Bernard Heuvelmans, some years ago agreed with my theory, that the “Queensland Tiger Cat” may be a relative of the supposed long-extinct Marsupial Lion, Thylacoleo carnifex.

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