The Emmaville panther: Donald Clifford's sighting, 1958

The Northern Tablelands of New South Wales. Long before 1958, people here talked about a big black cat. In 1902 Harry Leader and a brother heard a blood-curdling roar, shot an animal and sent the hide to Sydney. A tanner said it was a panther. In 1949 Harry Waters watched an animal for about five minutes in Rangers Valley. Then came 1958. On 19 February, near Coolatai, 16-year-old Kenneth Outzens saw a panther suddenly appear on a rock 10 feet away. Outzens' horse bolted. Days later Outzens and Laurance Miller barricaded themselves in a caravan while something prowled outside.

20 June 1958. Donald Clifford, aged 15, was searching for lost horses in rough country 18 miles from Emmaville. A mere thirty paces ahead was a large cat-like beast. Donald fled for his life, and told Mr McElroy, a miner working nearby.

McElroy had a story of his own. The day before, the miner had found the carcass of a big kangaroo. It had been ripped to shreds. Its backbone was torn out. McElroy's jacket had been torn to pieces. McElroy and Donald's father, Rex Clifford, went back to the spot. They found prints the size of a man's hand. The claw marks were prominent.

The story spread fast. Around 25 and 26 June, Sir Edward Hallstrom, chairman of the Taronga Zoo Trust, offered a reward. £1,000 if the animal proved to be an Australian marsupial cat. £500 if it was an Indian panther. Not everyone was convinced. Constable Watts said he hadn't actually seen for himself any paw prints. The Glen Innes Examiner reported that locals regarded the whole affair as rather a joke. The Glen Innes Golf Club added a rule: "A ball lying so close to a panther that the swing or stance is restricted, may be dropped two club lengths away." One reader said the panther was "best seen after quite a few whiskeys!"

Others took it seriously. J. Bergin, a big-game hunter just back from India, looked at dead cattle on Ray Schroeder's property, Welcomp. Les Hall of the Sheep Service Company quoted Bergin as saying that "dingoes don't eat cattle but that panthers do." Hall described a panther belt running from Tenterfield across to Coolatai and down into the Gulf country. A planned hunt, with goats and dogs as decoys, was called off.

On 30 June a station owner reportedly shot a large black panther near Emmaville, estimated at 300 lb. It ran off wounded. No body was ever found. On 1 August a native cat was caught near Bungulla and sent to Taronga Zoo.

Within weeks, locals were suggesting that pigs had killed the cattle. More theories followed. A circus escapee that was never reported. Pumas kept as mascots at wartime airforce bases, said to have been smuggled in Vultee Vengeance dive bombers by US airmen. Feral cats, misjudged for size. Swamp wallabies. Black dingoes. Or a surviving marsupial lion, Thylacoleo.

Modern wildlife experts remain doubtful. In 2012 Stuart Boyd-Law of the NPWS said remote cameras covering 324,000 ha had caught no panthers. "I haven't seen a good photo of one or scats or paw prints." Guy Ballard of the University of New England put it simply: "Most people commonly overestimate the size of a feral cat, especially in the distance."

The sightings never quite stopped. In 1967 Cathy and Peter Potter saw an animal about 4 m long at Wongalea. "I've never forgotten it," Peter Potter said. "It was phenomenal, not an everyday thing." Rex Gilroy told the story in Mysterious Australia. Emmaville still has its Emmaville Panther Pub. And the cat remains what it was in 1958. Never caught. Never explained.