The Tantanoola Tiger was shot on August 21, 1895, by Tom Donovan \u2014 if what was published in the Border Watch newspaper at the time is to be believed.<\/p>\n
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The Tantanoola Tiger soon after it was caught in 1895. (Supplied: Neville Bonney)<\/p>\n
Local author Neville Bonney is about to put out the third edition of his book The Tantanoola Tiger, which was first published almost 50 years ago.<\/p>\n
“There’s conjecture of the man who shot the tiger,” he says.<\/p>\n
“I’m not going to say any more on that because that comes out in the book, but I can tell you now it’s very doubtful if that person shot the tiger.”<\/p>\n
Local fear spreads nationwide<\/p>\n
The first reports of seeing a “tiger” in the area came in 1893, along with worries about sheep being eaten and cattle being attacked.<\/p>\n
It was immediately connected with other reports that a tiger had escaped from a circus travelling between Robe and Mount Gambier 10 years earlier.<\/p>\n
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V.A. Willshire, the licensee of the Tantanoola Tiger Hotel, with the Tantanoola Tiger in 1947. (Supplied: The Tantanoola Tiger)<\/p>\n
Mr Bonney says there was a real fear among the community.<\/p>\n
“I mean, children were escorted to Tantanoola school each day because they were frightened that they might get marauded on the way,” he says.<\/p>\n
“That was the fear that the district had from about 1883 right through to about 1895 when it was shot.”<\/p>\n
Federation University associate professor of history David Waldron, who wrote a book on Australian big cat folklore called Snarls from the Tea Tree<\/a>, says the search for the Tantanoola tiger was a “national phenomenon”, having occurred soon after the establishment of the telegraph, which allowed information to spread much more quickly than before.<\/p>\n The Tantanoola Tigers football team with the Tantanoola Tiger after winning a premiership in 1947. (Supplied: Neville Bonney)<\/p>\n Soon, he says, there were advertisements for safari suits to catch a tiger in, and guns to shoot it with.<\/p>\n “There was actually times \u2026 [when] so many people were employed out looking for tigers that they had trouble finding personnel [to help] deal with a boat that went down off the coast of Robe,” Dr Waldron says.<\/p>\n Theories and legendsThere was even a conspiracy theory at the time that the Victorian government was releasing large predators to put a stop to South Australia’s burgeoning wool industry. \u00a0Why do we see big cats?<\/a><\/p>\n Stories of big cats prowling the Australian bush are generations old. But why do many Australians think they’ve seen them, and what does it say about our relationship with the bush?<\/p>\n Victoria, for its part, has its own folklore surrounding big cat sightings.<\/p>\n One of the most notable legends is the Otways panther<\/a>. There was also a puma shot in St Arnaud in 1924 that had escaped from a circus.<\/p>\n While in Gippsland, a very large dingo-dog that was shot in 1936 became known as the “Beast of Briagolong”.<\/p>\n “It’s a story that’s really deeply enmeshed in Australian folk culture,” Dr Waldron says.<\/p>\n “It relates to the environment, it relates to introduced species, it relates to panic over stock losses in farming, in relates to Australia’s complex relationship with the dingo \u2014 it’s an important story.” The Tantanoola Tigers football team plays against Kalangadoo earlier this month. (ABC South East SA: Eugene Boisvert)<\/p>\n Could it be a dingo?<\/p>\n Just three days after the Tantanoola tiger was killed in 1895, it was put on display for people to pay to see in Mount Gambier.<\/p>\n The taxidermist that stuffed it declared it to be a European wolf, while others called it a Syrian wolf, or an Assyrian wolf.<\/p>\n Some thought it looked more like a dingo, an idea that Dr Waldron believes is most plausible.<\/p>\n “I’ve had wildlife experts look at it and they’re all quite convinced it’s an alpine dingo<\/a>, and when you look at an alpine dingo next to it, it quite clearly is,” he says.<\/p>\n The Tantanoola Tiger Hotel was known as the Railway Hotel before 1905. (ABC South East SA: Eugene Boisvert)<\/p>\n Dr Waldron says the wolf idea was a reference from a poem written by Lord Byron in 1815 about the Assyrians’ siege of Jerusalem in 701 BC.<\/p>\n “If you actually have a look at a wolf, it’s a very distinct animal, not least of which there is no such thing as an Assyrian wolf which is what they called it in the papers, throwing in the Biblical reference,” he says.<\/p>\n It is not a Bengal tiger like the one on top of the Tantanoola Tiger Hotel, where the Tantanoola tiger has been on display in a cabinet since 1947, when Mr Donovan sold it to the then-owner.<\/p>\n The Tantanoola Tiger attracts visitors to the small town. (ABC South East SA: Eugene Boisvert)<\/p>\n Mr Bonney says what the tiger is is not the point.<\/p>\n “It doesn’t matter,” he says.<\/p>\n “It’s still the Tantanoola tiger.”<\/p>\n Origins still unknown<\/p>\n If the Tantanoola tiger is a wolf, there has not yet been an explanation as to how it got to live in South Australia’s south-east.<\/p>\n One speculation is that it survived one of the shipwrecks that were common on the coast<\/a> nearby in the 19th century.<\/p>\n Rebecca and Shaun Day took over running the Tantanoola Tiger Hotel two years ago. (ABC South East SA: Eugene Boisvert)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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