The Tantanoola Tiger: the wolf shot at Tantanoola, South Australia (1895)

The story starts with a circus. In the early 1880s, a travelling show was moving between Millicent and Mount Gambier in South Australia. Its Bengal tiger reportedly escaped. Then, in the early 1890s, sheep began disappearing around Tantanoola. People blamed the missing tiger.

From 1893, reports came in of a strange animal. An employee of Mr Wehl was out hunting when he saw it. The Advertiser put it plainly. He "had seen a strange animal, but was some distance off and did not care to make a closer acquaintance."

Others came closer. One eyewitness claimed to have seen the animal carrying a full grown sheep in its mouth. Some spoke of stripes on its back. Some said it was the tiger. Others said it was a large dog. Later retellings told of children going to school with armed escorts, and families staying indoors.

August 1895. The animal was reported on Mr. Gardiner's station. Tom Donovan and Walter Taylor went out to track the beast. When they got within 200 yards, Donovan fired. The bullet went through the animal's heart.

It was no tiger. The Horsham Times report described "an exceptionally large fawn-colored wolf, with a dark back, measuring 4 feet 6 inches from the head to the tip of the tail." Mount Gambier taxidermist Marks called it an "Assyrian or Northern Russian Wolf." Three days later it was on show in Mount Gambier for paying visitors. Then it was stuffed, and lacquered a little around the gums to give a savage look.

The shooting did not end the losses. Sheep kept disappearing for up to 15 years. Police finally found the pattern. Sheep were driven into dense scrub and slaughtered. The carcasses were covered over. The skins were sold. Detective Allchurch went undercover as a tramp and arrested a local man, Robert Charles Edmondson. Tried at Millicent, Edmondson pleaded guilty to killing 78 sheep and was sentenced to six years' hard labour. Later writers call him the "human tiger."

Was it even a wolf? Associate Professor David Waldron of Federation University says he is "quite convinced it's an alpine dingo." He reads "Assyrian wolf" as an echo of Byron's 1815 poem "The Destruction of Sennacherib", not a species identification. Other versions tell of a wolf from a shipwreck, perhaps the Helena. In 1957 Alf Warman, aged 90, of Adelaide, said the animal was his own dog. A deer-hound and bloodhound cross, sent to relatives in the south-east to help control wild dogs. Even the shooter is in question. Local historian Neville Bonney says Donovan's wife fired the shot, being "a superior marksman," and calls Donovan's credit "very doubtful."

The animal still stands in a glass case in the front bar of the Tantanoola Tiger Hotel, shown with the gun said to have shot it. It has been there since 1947. The local football club is the Tantanoola Tigers. On 1 October 1995, the Hon. Des Corcoran unveiled a centenary monument. Bonney's book, The Tantanoola Tiger, first appeared in 1976. In August 2025, 130 years on, the questions still remained.