Kreftt, G. (1871)

One interesting side note in my investigations into Australian Forteana and the folklore of Big Cats in the bush is the sublimated but quite ubiquitous legacy of the Thylacine in the Australian psyche.  Even a British Fortean research organization "The Centre for Fortean Zoology" has a Thylacine as its primary symbol.  Similarly, when talking with researchers into Australian Big Cat phenomena almost invariably Thylacines seem to emerge time and time again, in almost every conversation whether it be looking at the injuries inflicted of dead stock or wild life, footprints or comparisons to feral dogs and cats.  It was also a central theme of the Australian Rare Fauna Research Association or (AFRRA) and that of Peter Chapple, its founder.  This seems to be equally the case on the mainland and in Tasmania despite its history as a Tasmanian animal.  Reported sightings of Thylacines seem equally common on the mainland of Australia as Tasmania.  There is also a wealth of folklore regarding potential releasing of Thylacines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Western Australia and Wilson's Promontory in Victoria in hopes of the preserving the species.  In discussion with the Devon based CFZ why they chose the Thylacine as their symbol I was told it was selected because of all the Fortean animals people claim to see in the wilderness the Thylacine was the most likely to exist.  However I think there maybe more to this given the kind of interest the animal engenders and its centrality in, for example, the Tasmanian tourist industry. 

For those reading this Blog who are not familiar with the animal, the Thylacine or (rather inappropriately named) Tasmanian Tiger was a large marsupial predator of Australia which suffered massive extermination through over hunting, disease, habitat loss and competition with dogs during the 19th century.  The last officially known and recorded animal died in Hobart Zoo in 1936.  A bounty was placed on them the Van Diemans Land Company in the 1830s and between 1888 and 1909 the Tasmanian government was paying for a pound per full grown animal and ten shillings for juveniles.  The bulk of the dead seem to have been turned into knick knacks such as waistcoats, pin cushions, rugs and other paraphernalia.  It is interesting however that discussion about its potential extinction were being discussed as early as 1868 and quite often linked with attempts to relocate and destroy the Australian Aboriginal population of Tasmania as we can see in the rather (in my view) disturbing quote above from the Museum of Sydney to the Tasmanian Museum recommending legal action be taken to secure bodies for study and research in the near future.  So much of the material I've come across reads like a deliberate exhortation to exterminate these animals over, largely unsubstantiated fears the animal may feed on human stock, with few dissenting voices.  Furthermore, like the indigenous people of Tasmania there is a kind of perceived inevitability and hope for their eventual extermination in the literature of the day, beyond a few dissenting voices.  In the early twentieth century, when the reality of the animals immanent demise became apparent there seems to be a realisation of the consequences of mass extinction and attempts made to preserve the animal too little too late. 

Reading over this, and much of it is new to me, it seems such an incredible tragedy for such a unique and beautiful animal.  It was a creature which, while superficially seeming like a wolf in appearance, was so different, unique and alien to the European view of the landscape.  I think in a way that it has come to represent a loss of innocence and an awareness of what reshaping the Australian landscape into a model of England really represented.  I've yet to come across the person who doesn't hope that somewhere in the more remote regions of bushland Thylacines are still living, hunting and breeding.  Furthermore, like Tasmanian Aboriginals they refuse to just lay down and die with many many sightings, prints, dead animals attributed to their hunting and eyewitness accounts both on the mainland and in Tasmania itself.  There have also been many attempts to find and locate thenm in the wilds of Tasmania.  (I also have to say I am increasingly amazed about just how little we know about the Australian Bush, even in the countryside near built up areas and what can live there largely unseen.  I never seen a quoll but I know they are there.  Similarly I have heard many times from reputable sources that the bush is rather full of feral dogs but I have only seen one in the wild once and I have to say, oddly enough, what my father and I saw we first thought was a Thylacine and I am still not sure what the animal was. Incidentally, it was just stated as fact in my education as a child that all Tasmanian Aboriginals were exterminated by the government in a deliberate pogrom and the remainder sent to King Island where they died shortly there after.  (Perhaps even more strange is the fact that this was never called genocide given that is certainly what was described).  Its now been found that this was a distortion of the facts with survivors being shipped to the mainland, intermarried with white communities and sent to other parts of the country. 

Incidently, for anyone thinking the slaughter of Tasmanian Aboriginals was somehow unknown or kept under the rug during the 19th century, I'd draw your attention to this quote from H.G. Wells "War of the Worlds" which, incidently, they never mention in the block buster films of the novel.

"And before we judge them too harshly, we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species  has wrought, not only upon animals such as the vanished Bison and the Dodo, but upon our own inferior races.  The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years.  Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit."  Wells (1898)

The overall impression I get from this is much like when a child breaks a vase or valuable object and gets to work with the superglue and concocting stories to make it seem ok when they know in their heart of hearts they have done something terrible.  I remember as a child myself when an unfortunate accident occurred with my younger sister trying to teach her cat to swim which ended with the cat drowning.  I can clearly remember seeing the dead cat afterwards limp, bedraggled and with open eyes with nothing behind it thinking there had to be something I could do to make it better and desperately having surges of hope at seeing things like open eyes or a gust of wind making the fur look like it was moving.  This is the kind of feeling I get in the broader culture surrounding Thylacines. Perhaps this is even more the case in such an aesthetically pleasing and graceful animal that has come, I think, to quintessentially represent Australia's destruction of the landscape and legacy of mass extinction.  It also has a strong romantic appeal and is tied to a re-enchantment of the landscape and symbolic of the horror of industrialism and the destruction of the natural world.   So in the end, at this stage I am pondering this question.

Is the centrality of Thylacines in Forteana in part relating to the experience of guilt regarding the rather bloody minded extermination of a beautiful graceful animal and our own deeply buried guilt of the legacy of colonialism and the destruction of the landscape?