Thylacine by David Owen Read Free Book Online Page B

land, burning stumps at night, and I went with them while they stoked the fires. There was a gully just a way from where the fires was, and these Hyenas or tigers would come and watch, we could see there [sic] eyes shining, we had a clear look at their outline if we went towards them then they would dissapear [sic] but would come back, when we went home they followed us but didn’t harm us. Dogs were afraid of them. They done no harm to any stock I can recall.
    S. M ITCHELL, C OSGROVE P ARK
    T he island upon which the thylacine became isolated had geographic and climatic features rendering it doubly unique. Not only was it part of an ancient floating laboratory but subsequently, through various Ice Age-induced phases as a true island, it developed diverse temperate conditions supporting a variety of life forms. As will be shown, the thylacine population may have been able to benefit significantly from the presence of the Palawa Aboriginal people on the island they knew as Trowenna over the past 40 000 years. 1
    The island is an extension of mainland Australia’s Great Dividing Range. Its mountainous western side receives copious rain delivered by the constant winds of the Roaring Forties. Large areas to the east in these mountains’ rainshadow are dry for much of the year. Vegetation types and the animals feeding off them are adapted to this west–east, wet–dry pattern.
    Prior to European settlement of the island, Trowenna had enjoyed a seemingly benign existence. There is no evidence of tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes, dramatic extinctions or other major natural calamities. Indeed, its greatest mystery may be why its people stopped eating scale fish (at about the time when, in the Middle East, chickens were being domesticated and the making of popcorn discovered, say around 3500–4000 BC). 2
    A number of natural conditions have operated together to the benefit of the thylacine since the island’s existence in its geographically modern form. One is the climate—even during its colder periods and tundra-like conditions, prey was in good supply. Another is the island’s size. At nearly 70 000 square kilometres, it is large enough to support a variety of microclimates and the relative abundance of prey in each. Then there was the absence of quadruped carnivores in direct competition with the thylacine. (Earlier, Tasmania’s carnivorous megafauna, specifically Thylacolea carnifex , may well have been at the top of the food chain, until wiped out through a likely combination of Aboriginal hunting, fire and adverse climatic changes, none of which impacted negatively on the small thylacine.)
    Most importantly, Aborigines did not fear and therefore did not persecute the thylacine, nor was it a traditional part of their diet, although most other terrestrial creatures were: macropods, the native cat, possums, wombat, echidna, seals, penguins, swans, emu and more. 3
    Pre-1803 hard data on the animal in Tasmania are virtually non-existent, whereas something is known of the pre-contact Aboriginal tribes, derived from archaeological studies and oral sources, and of the Aborigines in settlement times, in particular from the diaries of George Augustus Robinson, the controversial Aboriginal–settler ‘conciliator’. 4 Because the thylacine’s distribution across the island was strikingly similar to that of its indigenous people, a look back at the animal in its natural state becomes possible through what is known of the people of Trowenna in their natural state.
    There were a number of Aboriginal languages, resulting in various names being given to the thylacine: lagunta , corinna , laoonana and ka-nunnah amongst them. Just one thylacine legend is known to be recorded. It is part of the Cotton collection as told by the ‘high priest’ Timler, and attributed to Mannalargenna, ‘a great Warrior, Sage and overall Chief of a North-East Coast Federation of Tribes’. 5 It is