By NOEL MURPHY
A FRESH report of a big cat sighting by a Geelong science teacher has lent further weight to the Otways panther legend.
Jamie Saunders told the Independent he believed he spotted a panther while driving along a dirt track at night near Hordern Vale last month.
“I was with my brother-in-law, it was 9.30 and we passed something just on the right, we just saw the back of it and its tail, it was caught in headlights,” the Kardinia College physics teacher said.
“We both looked at each other ‘What the hell was that?’ I reversed back but it had disappeared. I really thought it looked like a big cat. We both thought it was something very odd.
“I thought it was a cat was because of its tail, which was kind of curled, S-shaped. It had a stubby end and was the same thickness its full length.
“The size of the thing was big. We thought the tail was at least a metre long. We were in a VW Transporter and quite high up, we had a good view of this big thing and thought it was something quite unusual.”
Mr Saunder’s report follows multiple claims in recent years – including a scats from Wensleydale DNA-tested as black Asian leopards.
Researchers Simon Townsend and Dr David Waldron contend 19th century settlers set up menageries with imported lions, tigers and other large cats. They believe the legendary bush puma/panther to be melanistic Asian leopards brought to Australia by acclimatisation societies.
Big cat hunter Michael Moss, of Melbourne, has collected cat and Tasmanian tiger reports for the past 17 years from Ocean Grove to Apollo Bay, Beech Forest and Warrion.
UK-born Mr Saunders said he spent a lot of time in zoos as a child, his father and grandfather managing them.
“It didn’t strike me as, say, a wallaby,” he said. “It was dark grey coloured and looked muddy and bedraggled, which made sense to me, it’s a swampy area there.
“We reversed back to where we spotted it, marked it with a stick and on the way back out I looked around for paw prints, fur or anything but there were no markings of any sort anywhere — but you could see little trails where things went up the bank.”
READ MORE on the Otways’ big cat and thylacine sightings in the latest edition of GC Geelong Coast magazine, out now at selected newsagents.
