Wyong Creek: disembowelled kangaroo ignites `panther’ speculation

WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT: It is the grim discovery that has sparked more questions than answers and is sure to reignite the age-old debate about the existence of the mythical “Ourimbah panther”.

Phil Crawford found this dead kangaroo on his Wyong Creek property and has no idea what attacked it. Picture: Phil Crawford

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It is the grim discovery that has sparked more questions than answers and is sure to reignite the age-old debate about the existence of the mythical “Ourimbah panther”.

Phil Crawford “got up about 6am and went to let the goats out” on his Wyong Creek property last month when he discovered a disembowelled kangaroo “about 20m from the house”.

“There was no evidence it was attacked around the neck, there weren’t any other bite marks,” he said.

“The dew on the grass was all disturbed around it and there was some blood on the ground.

“I have a couple of dogs on the property that can hear a stick snap and they didn’t hear a thing.”

There have been reported sightings of a panther on the Central Coast for years.

Mr Crawford said he had a few sheep attacked on his property in the past but they had been bitten around the throat, presumably by foxes.

He said he had “no idea” what attacked this kangaroo.

“It looks like it’s been attacked by a shark,” he said.

Mr Crawford said after he posted the picture to a closed Facebook group for people living in the Yarramalong and Dooralong valleys “some woman said (the same thing) happened to her calf”.

Jake Cassar, with his dog Benson, from Kariong, went on a quest in 2015 to capture the Central Coast's infamous black panther. Picture: Peter Clark

The grisly attack is sure to fuel speculation over the famed Ourimbah “panther” which has reportedly been seen from time to time by residents living around the foothills of the Ourimbah State Forest.

In 2015 self-styled bush tucker man Jake Cassar spent several days living in a cave in dense bushland behind Palmdale on the fringe of the state forest armed with a motion detection camera.

He captured a few images of what he believed was one of Australia’s elusive “big cats”.

Motion detection camera image captured by bush tucker man Jake Cassar.

Another image taken during Cassar’s expedition.

“If it’s a feral cat, it’s the biggest one I have ever seen,’’ he said at the time.

“I used to cull feral animals for conservation, it’s got to be four or five inches bigger than any feral cat I’ve seen … it’s more like a bobcat than a panther.”

The last time there had been multiple sightings of the famed black panther was in 2006.

Maggie Dowton was visiting her father’s gravesite at Palmdale on Anzac Day when she reported seeing a large black catlike figure about a kilometre away in a clearing at the foot of dense forest before it slunk away.

Copy photo of the mythical Lithgow Panther, the mysterious black cat which has been allegedly said to roam Penrith, the Hawkesbury, Lithgow and Blue Mountains for a number of years. Picture: Supplied

Two months later a man reported seeing a large black panther near Narara train station.

It followed numerous sightings of big cats years earlier at Kulnura.

Feral cats have been known to grow up to four times larger than domestic cats and weigh in at up to 19kg.

But this is still well shy of a melanistic or black leopard, which can weigh as much as 90kg.

Other theories behind panther sightings on the Coast and more in the Blue Mountains include they could have been the offspring of panthers, which escaped private menageries and travelling circuses last century.