Aussies tell of frightening big cat sightings across the country

Many Aussies are certain they have seen mysterious black panthers in bushland and highways across Australia.

Warning: Graphic image

The story of black panthers secretly roaming in the bushland is a decades-old tale of Aussie folklore.

But despite being tinged with controversy and steeped in a history of conspiracy theories, the legend is flourishing, as hundreds of sightings continue being made across the country.

Big cat spotters, certain of what they’ve seen, continue to make dozens of reports of mysterious, large black cats roaming in bushland, or bounding across highways with continued frequency.

Jamie Pratt told news.com.au of the large puma-type animal he saw in central Victoria.

“There was no doubt about it, it was huge,” he said of the creature, which was less than a hundred metres from him, in semi-clear bushland outside of Tarnagulla.

“It was big, slinking down the gully and it had a massive tail — it was much bigger than a regular cat and much bigger than a feral cat,” Mr Pratt explained.

He said the area where he’d seen the black panther was filled with trees, but clear enough to see 60 to 70 metres away, where the cat was slinking along. It had a distinctive black body, and a large, big-cat type head.

He said seeing the animal made his blood pump fast, frightening him. He spotted the animal years ago, in the late 1990s while walking his two dogs, large Ridgebacks, and remembers the moment clear as day.

An iconic image of the mysterious Lithgow Panther, which many locals have sighted across the decades. Picture: Supplied

Others have reported seeing a “very large black cat” more recently in the same area, with multiple reports on the Big Cat Sightings Australia Facebook Group describing a disturbingly large animal in Tarnagulla.

Mr Pratt said some of these people had contacted him, telling him what they’d seen.

A woman posting in the group said she’d also seen a black panther in the Tarnagulla area more recently, that crossed the road in a single jump. She said it was “not as high as a deer, but huge as in length”.

A quick browse online and you’ll realise the big cat community in Australia has thousands of members and is thriving.

While groups are occasionally infiltrated by the odd dodgy picture, or extremely blurry video, mostly the posts come from earnest Aussies who talk about seeing some “big” and frightening cats.

They describe panthers either bounding across the road, or slinking low, with large heads, and massive tails, held low to the ground.

Often, people who see the panthers are taken aback, shocked, and frightened, and say the wily animal will disappear as quickly as it appeared.

A couple in the Megalong Valley claimed they spotted a black panther in 2018. Picture: Facebook

Another big cat spotter told news.com.au he saw a cat bound across the road while driving home from a friend’s home, just 30 minutes outside of Sydney.

Ray Wilesmith said while driving home from a friend’s home in Warragamba, he was rounding the S-bend corners near Silverdale.

He said he saw the animal bolt out in front of the car, sprint across the road, and “just as quick (it) was gone”.

Mr Wilesmith said everyone in the car saw the panther, including his wife and preschool-aged children, who were left wondering “WTF was that”.

He was so taken by sighting the creature, he started filming all his car trips in the area, and captured every following journey he took in the hopes of catching another glimpse of the animal.

“We (filmed) the next 27 trips there on the hope we could capture it,” Mr Wilesmith told news.com.au. “Alas,” he never did capture another sighting of the animal.

A woman shared a photo of a maimed kangaroo carcass she found on her property. Picture: Facebook

A video showed an extensively scratched-up tree in central west NSW. Picture: Facebook

OTHER SIGNS OF BIG CATS?

As well as stories of sightings, big cat enthusiasts share photos of suspicious paw prints found in bushland; scratched trees; or native animals, possibly brutally killed by top-tier predators running free in bushland.

One woman shared a story in big cat group of hearing a long, “tremendous sound”, which she compared to a lion’s roar while camping near Toodyay in Western Australia.

She said the roar, which sounded like a cross between a woman’s scream and a big cat howl lasted between eight and 15 seconds.

Another woman, Kerrie Harvey, shared a video of a large tree trunk covered in suspicious scratch marks, in a remote area in the Central West Riverine Floodplain of NSW.

She said she’d accessed the remote area via kayak, and was startled to discover the scratched-up tree.

Earlier in the year, she and her mother had “100 per cent” seen a “Panther size jet-black cat” in the early hours of the morning, as it pounced across a road in front of their car, she said.

Mr Pratt said he relayed the sighting to one of his friends, who told him a story about a disturbing find of his own.

“One of my mates I talked to about it out here, a shearer, said he’d seen a kangaroo dragged off the road and mauled, an animal had obviously mauled it,” Mr Pratt said. “He believed it a big cat mauled it.”

Others have reported similar disturbing sightings, including large kangaroos with their intestines and internal organs ripped out, and their flanks torn up and bones broken.

WHY ISN’T NEWS OF WILD BIG CATS PUBLIC?

Mr Pratt said after he sighted the puma/panther-like creature while walking his dogs in Central Victoria, he was certain about what he’d seen. But he said when he told others, they mocked him.

“I mentioned it to a couple of people and they thought I was crazy,” Mr Pratt said.

He said conversations about big cats are often hushed up within communities and he thinks people often conflate the sightings with conspiracy stories linked to the animals.

He said his friend who had encountered the maimed kangaroo said he also had felt others would think he might be “crazy”.

Vaughn King, a former keeper of big cats at Australia Zoo, previously said he believes three types of big cats are indeed roaming bushland across Australia. He identified the likely culprits as the leopard, jaguar and mountain lion in an interview with The Newcastle Herald in 2017.

Mr King said he’d been directly told by a former Australian circus owner that they’d lost big cats over the years.
“I have spoken with a former circus owner who admitted to me in person that they had plenty of accidents over the years, one in particular where they lost an array of animals – including big cats (black leopards),” he said.

Other theories abound for how big cats may have ended up in Aussie bushland, including that US naval soldiers who travelled to Australia were involved in the accidental release of the panthers, and were unable to capture the felines after they escaped.

Another conspiracy is that rural-living eccentrics have adopted the animals on the black market as cubs, and lost them as they became unmanageable adults.

Whatever the case, many Aussies certainly believe the big cats are out there.

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