Frances Clark's tiger at the front gate, Kaiapoi (the first Canterbury Panther report)

Kaiapoi lies in the Waimakariri District of North Canterbury, about 17 km north of Christchurch. In July 1977 one of its residents made a report that New Zealand has never quite stopped talking about.

Frances Clark was an early riser. One morning she opened the blinds. By her front gate stood a tiger. One account puts it on Monday, July 18, at 4am. The animal was fair in colour and had a long tail. She could not see any stripes.

At first she did not plan to tell anyone. She could hardly believe it herself. Then she began to worry. Later that morning, schoolchildren would be out. She had no doubt about what she had seen. "I know a pig when I see one, and I know an Alsatian as well. But it was definitely a tiger."

Police took her seriously. They formed a search party that included staff from Orana Wildlife Park, some armed with tranquilliser guns. Suspicion fell on Orana, at Harewood, and on a circus that had been in the area a week earlier. Every big cat at both was accounted for. The search found nothing. Clark was ridiculed and accused of lying.

Several days later, paw prints were found at Pines Beach, and by one account at Kairaki Beach. Mr Johnstone of Orana said they were "undoubtedly those of a large cat", larger than a lion's. He stopped short of calling them a tiger's. There were droppings too. Christchurch veterinarian Lindsay Fraser called them "consistent with the equivalent (tiger) species at Orana Park".

A second search followed. Accounts describe it as a military search, across land and sky. Nothing was found. Then a farmer near Pines Beach reported a large cat stalking his cattle. Another search. Still nothing. Police warned they would prosecute if a deliberate release from a zoo or circus came to light. No charge ever followed.

No one has ever alleged that Clark's sighting was a hoax. The ridicule was disbelief, not a finding. For the wider legend, the usual answer is large feral cats. When a mountain biker in Twizel reported a Labrador sized cat in 1996, MAF told her it was probably "a well-fed feral cat". MAF pest officers said feral cats can reach 14 kg. In 2020 a DNA test on a cat shot by Jesse Feary came back, in the words of Dr Shaun Wilkinson of Wilderlab, as "just a standard cat". In 2025 the NZ Skeptics pointed to "mis-identifications, myth-making, and the power of suggestion".

Yet Clark described a fair coloured animal with a long tail. The later legend is about black cats. No explanation has ever been aimed at her sighting in particular.

Her report opened a wave of lioness and tiger sightings in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Over the decades the Canterbury Panther turned black. A black panther in the Mackenzie Country in 1999. A black cat dragging a lamb 20 m at Mount Somers in 2007. A black cat photographed on frozen Lake Clearwater in 2013. Footage from the forest at Hanmer Springs in 2020. Local authorities searched again in 2001, 2003 and 2006.

Scott Bainbridge retold the case in New Zealand Mysteries in 2020. In 2024 Ant Timpson's film Bookworm, with Elijah Wood and Nell Fisher, was shot in "panther" country. It all began at one front gate in Kaiapoi.