Grant Denyer and Cheryl Rogers report the Lithgow panther on their Bathurst property

For years, people around the Blue Mountains and Lithgow have reported a large black cat. More than 500 reports in 20 years. The Grose Vale Group has logged 20 to 30 a year since 1998.

In 1999 NSW Agriculture ecologist Dr Johannes Bauer concluded that "the most likely explanation of the evidence…is the presence of a large feline predator". A 2003 review found nothing conclusive, but said the cats "cannot be discounted". In 2008 an unreleased draft called such animals "more likely than not". The public version did not. Cover-up allegations followed.

November 2018. Grant Denyer, presenter of Family Feud and co-host of the 2DayFM breakfast show, was at home on a rural property outside Bathurst. About 60 km west of Lithgow. Denyer was standing in the kitchen, looking out at the paddock. Then a "big, slinky, feline" jumped the fence "like it was nothing".

Denyer grabbed the binoculars and got "a full, good, close-up view". Full-grown ewes stood in the paddock. The animal was the same size. "It stood out like anything," Denyer later told 2GB. "It's ten times the size of a domestic cat. It's unmistakable." Denyer filmed it. The footage was short, hazy and shaky.

Cheryl Rogers had seen it long before. A TV producer and Denyer's wife, Rogers first saw the animal "when I was heavily pregnant with Scout and [Grant] told me I was hallucinating". Denyer admitted reacting "like everybody else". Rogers had seen it "a bunch of times" before Denyer ever did. A friend also reportedly saw a panther on the property.

Down by the river, where Denyer believed the animal came from, there were wombat holes. Inside were "weird animal bones". "Wombats eat grass, they don't eat meat," Denyer said. "So something was dragging animals in there and devouring them."

On 2DayFM the announcement was blunt. "Yesterday team, guess what? We saw another panther, a black panther. I don't care if you believe or not." Co-hosts Ed Kavalee and Ash London were unconvinced. The video went up on Instagram on 12 November 2018. Pedestrian.TV ran it under a headline mocking the "Very Shit Video Evidence".

Denyer did not retreat. On 2GB with Ben Fordham: "The famous panther myth is TRUE!" In May 2020 Denyer told news.com.au of two sightings and new cameras on the property. In August 2020, on The Project, the Lithgow panther got a national stage. "I saw it. My wife saw it. I have some hazy and shaky video footage of it but I promise you it is out there. Panthers are real."

No official investigation of these sightings was found. For big cat reports in the region generally, the usual explanations are large feral domestic cats, black swamp wallabies, partial views of an animal's rear and tail in scrub, and escaped or released exotic animals. Barbara Triggs, the NSW DPI's mammal identification specialist, put it simply: "After all this time, you'd think someone would have a photo but they haven't." In 2013 invasive species expert John Parkes wrote: "There is no conclusive evidence that large cats exist in the wild in NSW." The size estimate rests on a comparison with ewes at an unknown distance; Denyer offered a theory of a different kind: perhaps a "half-panther half-wild cat hybrid".

The case now sits among the Blue Mountains panther reports, retold across radio, television and the web. Asking around locally, Denyer found that "everyone's got a tale". The position has never shifted. "I know it's real because I know what I saw with my two eyes."