National Park in Victoria....
Posted: Sat Apr 25, 2009 3:36 pm
Does anyone remember this story/pic.....
The story
In the UFO hysteria of the late 1990s, I often wondered about the people that reported strange sightings, and produced the occasional blurry photos. It came as something of a surprise to find myself apparently in this position! It happened on the way out of the "Prom" on 10 July 1997. My wife Marilyn sighted a very large, black cat, which we were convinced was a panther. (The Prom is Wilson's Promontory, a large wilderness National Park in Victoria, Australia, and the southernmost tip of Australia's mainland - see more at the Parks Victoria site, parkweb.)
We had stopped the car at about five o'clock to let our two girls have a closer look at some kangaroos. Marilyn stayed in the car, and spotted an odd black shape up on the hill. After first thinking it was a wombat, she eventually realised it was the head of a large cat, looking out from the scrub. When I came back and had a look, I managed to get one photo, and walked a bit closer to get a second. With Marilyn and the girls asking me not to get too close, I just got a second photo of head and shoulders as the cat sat up, and started running.
Just in case it was me it was running at, I started running back to the car as well, accompanied by screaming from the girls. I saw enough to see a very sleek, black shape speeding into the undergrowth, and a very frightened rabbit running out the other side. The rest of the family saw the cat running just like a panther in a wildlife movie, then disappearing into the scrub.
Two days later, we took more photos of the spot with the National Parks staff, so some more accurate estimates of the size of our cat could be worked out. I can't be sure if it is as big as we thought. We were quite convinced that this was the panther that the photo appears to show, but I may well have been running from an over-grown house cat!
The story
In the UFO hysteria of the late 1990s, I often wondered about the people that reported strange sightings, and produced the occasional blurry photos. It came as something of a surprise to find myself apparently in this position! It happened on the way out of the "Prom" on 10 July 1997. My wife Marilyn sighted a very large, black cat, which we were convinced was a panther. (The Prom is Wilson's Promontory, a large wilderness National Park in Victoria, Australia, and the southernmost tip of Australia's mainland - see more at the Parks Victoria site, parkweb.)
We had stopped the car at about five o'clock to let our two girls have a closer look at some kangaroos. Marilyn stayed in the car, and spotted an odd black shape up on the hill. After first thinking it was a wombat, she eventually realised it was the head of a large cat, looking out from the scrub. When I came back and had a look, I managed to get one photo, and walked a bit closer to get a second. With Marilyn and the girls asking me not to get too close, I just got a second photo of head and shoulders as the cat sat up, and started running.
Just in case it was me it was running at, I started running back to the car as well, accompanied by screaming from the girls. I saw enough to see a very sleek, black shape speeding into the undergrowth, and a very frightened rabbit running out the other side. The rest of the family saw the cat running just like a panther in a wildlife movie, then disappearing into the scrub.
Two days later, we took more photos of the spot with the National Parks staff, so some more accurate estimates of the size of our cat could be worked out. I can't be sure if it is as big as we thought. We were quite convinced that this was the panther that the photo appears to show, but I may well have been running from an over-grown house cat!
