Thylacine by David Owen Read Free Book Online

those were the calls of the island’s other carnivore, the scavenging Sarcophilus harrisii , a creature they named to reflect their fear: the devil. And by day, in that first summer of 1803–04, the sky was blanketed with vast plumes of acrid smoke, as the natives burnt their homeland, using the fierce heat of the malevolent northerly wind to speed the process.
    What must it have been like clinging so precariously to the unknown? Collins wrote this revealing descriptive account, in which nature surely has all the power:
    The extremity of Van Diemen’s Land, like that of Tierra del Fuego, presents a rugged and determined front to the icy regions of the south pole . . . It abounds with peaks and ridges, gaps and fissures, which not only disdain the smallest uniformity of figure, but are ever changing shape as the point of view is shifted. Beneath this strange confusion, the western part of this coast-line observes a regularity equally remarkable as the wild disorder which prevails above. Lofty ridges of mountains, bounded by tremendous cliffs, project from two to four miles into the sea . . . 3

    Robert Knopwood, MA, the first Church of England Chaplain of Van Diemen’s Land. This 1804 painting by Thomas George Gregson is in the possession of the Diocese of Tasmania. (State Library of Tasmania Heritage Collections)
    During their circumnavigation Bass and Flinders had entered the island’s northern Tamar River and reported favourably on prospects for a second settlement there. At this time, the Norfolk Island colony was being wound down; its convicts, free settlers and governor, Lieutenant Colonel William Paterson, consequently founded Port Dalrymple; the settlement was later moved down-river and named Launceston. In this way the island was divided into two ‘provinces’: the quaintly named Cornwall and Buckinghamshire.
    Paterson wrote the first extensive description of the mysterious Vandemonian ‘tyger’. It appeared in the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser of 21 April 1805, which prefaced his description with its own:
    An animal of a truly singular and novel description was killed by dogs the 30th of March on a hill immediately contiguous to the settlement . . . It must be considered of a species perfectly distinct from any of the animal creation hitherto known, and certainly the only powerful and terrific of the carnivorous and voracious tribe yet discovered on any part of New Holland or its adjacent islands.
    Paterson’s description reads, in part:
    It is very evident this species is destructive, and lives entirely on animal food; as on dissection his stomach was found filled with a quantity of kangaroo, weighing 5lbs, the weight of the whole animal 45 lbs . . . length of the eye, which is remarkably large and black, 11.4 inches . . . from the shoulder to the first stripe, 7 inches; from the first stripe to the extent of the body, 2 feet; length of the tail, 1 foot 8 inches; length of the fore leg, 11 inches; and of the fore foot, 5 inches; the fore foot with 5 blunt claws; height of the animal before, 1 foot 10 inches; stripes across the back 20, on the tail 3; 2 of the stripes extend down each thigh . . . on each side of the mouth are 19 bristles . . . 3 fore teeth in the upper jaw, and 6 in the under; 4 grinders of a side, in the upper and lower jaw; 3 single teeth also in each; 4 tusks, or canine teeth, length of each 1 inch . . . the body short hair and smooth, of a greyish colour, the stripes black . . . The form of the animal is that of the hyaena, at the same time strongly reminding the observer of a low wolf dog. The lips do not appear to conceal the tusks.
    Paterson, an avid naturalist and optimist, confidently predicted that within a few years his tiny settlement along the Esk and Tamar Rivers would be thriving. It would do so thanks to cattle and sheep. Far south in Hobart Town (a brave walk of eight days and nights along the midland plain, or two days on