Creatures, Myths & Legends

Mystery black panther is sighted in Goulburn

By T.K. Randall
October 5, 2014 ·  42 comments

Is a panther on the loose in Australia's wilds ? Image Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0 Rute Martins Goulburn residents Jeff and Ruth Gulson had been eating lunch when they spotted a huge cat-like creature in their garden through the kitchen window. As they watched it through binoculars they realized that the animal looked very much like a black panther.

"Let's be clear, this was certainly no dog," said Mr Gulson. "It was cat-like in its movement but it was a bigger than a sheep. We had the binoculars out. We watched it move."

The sighting is just one in a long line of similar reports spanning several decades in the rural regions around Sydney and its surrounding national parks. So frequent and convincing is the evidence in fact that even the local government has accepted the creature as a legitimate concern."Difficult as it seems to accept, the most likely explanation of the evidence is the presence of a large, feline predator," said wildlife ecologist Johannes Bauer who was commissioned back in 1999 to investigate the phenomenon. "In this area, [it is] most likely a leopard, less likely a jaguar."

Fortunately in this most recent case the Gulson's were able to record photographic evidence of the creature that they had encountered in their garden before it disappeared.

The picture they took can be found - here.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald | Comments (42)

Tags: Sydney, Australia, Panther, Cat