Creature record / 1995
25 January 1995. Just before dusk, in the forest inland from St Helens, northeast Tasmania. Ranger Charlie Beasley sat alone, binoculars raised, watching for birds across a valley. Then something stood on a rock ledge 350 metres away. It was sniffing the air. Dirty brown. Black stripes down its rib cage. A heavy tail held out in a gentle curve. For about two minutes he watched it. Then it stretched, turned and walked back into the scrub. Beasley believed he had seen a young thylacine, an animal long believed extinct. Heavy rain erased any tracks. An official search found nothing. Only his account remained, and the arguments over it began.
The thylacine, the striped carnivore of Tasmania, has had no confirmed sighting in the state for more than 50 years. That is the department's own position, restated in 2019. Yet reports keep arriving. A few come from people whose job is to know the bush.