The Emmerichs Thylacine Photographs

Early 2005. Klaus Emmerichs, a German who ran a small business, was touring Tasmania with partner Birgit Jansen. The couple had walked the Overland Track, then driven the West Coast. That same season, the thylacine was in the news. The Bulletin offered A$1.25 million for a live, unharmed thylacine, the Tasmanian tiger. Thylacine Expeditions added A$1.75 million.

February 2005. About 7:30 pm. At a campsite north-west of Derwent Bridge, Emmerichs heard running water and walked about 20 metres down an embankment toward a creek. Movement, near a fallen log. An animal stood below, sniffing the ground. Emmerichs was downwind. At first it did not notice the intruder.

Then it raised its head. "I quickly switched the camera on to night vision as the light was fading." Two photographs. The encounter lasted about 30 seconds. "He was making strange snuffing noises," Emmerichs said of the animal, recalling a strong, unusual smell and the thought that there might have been two, perhaps a young one. Then it moved away, unhurried. Emmerichs did not follow.

Emmerichs' brother, who had lived in Melbourne since the 1970s, took the story to the media and officials. It was "the Tasmanian tiger, 100 per cent," the brother said. Nick Mooney, a Parks and Wildlife biologist, first called it one of the most convincing cases for the species' survival. Bill Bleathman, director of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, found the images "really inconclusive" but said the animal "looked like a thylacine."

The Age signed an agreement on 17 March 2005, offering €15,000 for exclusive rights if the photos could be authenticated. The talks collapsed. The Sydney Morning Herald could not verify the images either. Both papers declined to publish.

27 March 2005. David Pemberton, a curator at the museum, told the ABC the photos were doctored. The animal "was very similar to another photograph that we quickly identified," and its posture had not changed between two shots taken seconds apart. The suspected source was a 1930s photograph by David Fleay at Beaumaris Zoo, reprinted in Heinz Moeller's book Der Beutelwolf.

A newspaper mock-up muddied things further. Mike Bowers of the Sydney Morning Herald made a quarter life size cardboard copy of the Fleay image and photographed it blurred beside a tree fern. According to Col Bailey, that picture spread around the world as if it were the real thing. Mooney later said a digital forensics expert "couldn't authenticate them," yet Mooney "could not say that they were fake."

6 February 2006. The couple were back in Tasmania, and met Bailey. On 16 April the Sunday Tasmanian published the photos at last, 14 months after the sighting. Critics questioned the blur, the colour and the date stamps. Emmerichs answered each point. The night vision setting always blurred. The date format had been changed on the flight. The images were still held in the camera's write protected internal memory, which Emmerichs argued meant they had not been edited.

Bailey called the account honest, noted that the ear position differs from the Fleay photo, and said the reward was never connected to the pictures. Alton Higgins overlaid the two images, and many felt the stripes matched too closely. Others found a stomach patch that lined up poorly.

No official finding was ever issued. In 2008 Mooney said, "The overwhelming evidence is that the thylacine is extinct." Still, the case inspired the whole Where Light Meets Dark website, and the 2005 news story lives on as an IELTS reading passage. The two frames remain where Emmerichs says they have always been. Inside the camera.