The Kenthurst Big-Cat Attack on Luke Walker

For decades, people in Sydney's west and the Blue Mountains had reported a large black cat. By one government count, over three decades there had been some 60 separate reports of a large cat-like animal attacking livestock and people. Most stayed local stories. Then a teenager in Kenthurst came home covered in blood. Walker's father, Gilroy reported, had seen a similar animal in the area about two years earlier.

Thursday 20 March 2003. About 9:30 pm. Luke Walker, 17, walked to the letterbox at the end of the long driveway to his parents' bush-set home, about 40 km north-west of the Sydney CBD. He collected the mail and turned back. "I was walking back towards the house and I could hear this cat growling behind me."

The animal came out of the shrubbery along a sandstone wall. By one account it leapt two metres. Its front claws struck his right arm while its hind legs, in his words, "ripped into my gut." Walker punched it in the side of the face, and it ran off into the darkness. "The whole attack couldn't have lasted more than five seconds."

He was certain of what he had seen. "I know it was big and black. I know it was feline." Huge, he said. About the size of a Labrador dog. Far too big to be a feral cat, and no dog.

The wounds were jagged gouges on his arm and torso, and the arm bled for four days. He had fevers, and according to investigators Rex Gilroy and Heather Gilroy, the wounds became infected and he needed medical attention. "It gave me some nice war injuries," he later told The Bulletin. The Hills Shire Times printed a photo of his bloodied arm. Afterwards he stayed wary of night checks on the mailbox.

On 4 April 2003 the Gilroys and a colleague cast paw prints on the ridge north of the property. Adult prints measured 10 by 8.3 cm. One large print measured 15 by 16 cm. A Channel TEN crew filmed the casting. Late in April, Hawkesbury Mayor Rex Stubbs called a community meeting. "The people who have seen it are very serious people," he said.

On 22 May 2003 the attack reached the NSW Legislative Assembly. Minister David Campbell told the house that "the presence of a large cat or cats has not been disproven." NSW Agriculture reopened its inquiry at a low level. Its 2003 report, by Bill Atkinson, judged free-ranging exotic large cats "more likely than not on available evidence." The report itself does not mention Kenthurst by name.

Gilroy read the prints differently. He said they showed "the unmistakable three lobed pad impression of a marsupial," and argued for a surviving relative of Thylacoleo carnifex, the marsupial lion. Walker had called it feline. No one analysed the casts independently.

Elsewhere in the region, the 2003 expert group judged other casts likely dog prints and a Lithgow video an oversized feral cat. Later reviews in 2009 and 2013 found no conclusive evidence and rejected the 2003 finding. No hoax claim has been made against Walker.

Sightings followed from Galston to Pitt Town. The Kenthurst attack became part of the long story of the Blue Mountains panther. It remains a rare thing in big cat lore. There was a named witness, a wound, and a government statement that the animal had not been disproven.