TIGER TALE

Your article on the Tasmanian tiger in AG 138 and the mention of numerous sightings in Gippsland prompts me to relay our experience on a clear June night last year when travelling through the Strzelecki Range, in West Gippsland. Similar to circumstances surrounding other recorded sightings, we rounded a bend on a remote section of the road to witness a creature we had hitherto only seen in photographs. From about 20m distance, and caught in full-beam, the distinctive bars across the animal’s back, its loping gait and tapered tail ruled out us mistaking it for a feral canine. My wife and I exchanged glances and asked each other “thylacine?” Our overwhelming feeling was one of privilege for a close, albeit brief, encounter with a creature that occupies the twilight territory between fable and fact.

JAMIE ETHERINGTON, ELLINBANK,VIC