Weird animals: are you game?

I had a ghost at Barkly, but that's a story best told at midnight around the fire...

Yeh we had one reported in the paper around the Yackandandah area. One look at who made the report and it must have been a smoky morning both inside and out. ;)

I saw a very big cat ( bigger than a dog ) out near Jackie Junction WA in the mid 90's. It sped away into the bush afore I could get my hands on the old convincer.

A Bandicoot stole a fish from under a tea-towel at Deaf Adder Gorge NT

A Dingo sniffed at me when camped at Twin Falls Gorge NT in the 1970's

Dingoes have raided our camps on a number of occasions

A Goanna cuddled up for some warmth at Jim Jim Creek NT one cold winters night. It was about 1.4 mtres in length and I had a devil of a time trying to get rid of him/her trying to roll out of the way

I shot a humungous feral cat at Wallaman Falls Qld one night as it approached our camp

I caught a Frill Neck Lizard once and was displaying in for tourists when it broke free, ran up my arm, knocking my hat off my head and perched on the dome. It's long nails drew a fair amount of blood much to the horror of the crowd.

We have had many animal encounters in our years of travelling, some of which we have a photographic record of.

While walking through rainforest (no track) i put my hand on a large monkey vine and it moved . It was a big python .

Kangaroos ate our hot dog buns while we went for a bush walk . They were in a plastic bag on top of a drum .

While at fraser in the early eighties , camped on the edge of lake mackenzie . I was sleeping outside on an old army stretcher and i could smell like bad breath . Opened my eyes and a friggin dingo was right there in front of my face . Frightened the crap out of me .

Jeff, cows doing silly things like climbing haystacks so they are near the top looking down at you. Koalas in calf sheds, hundreds of metres from eucalypts to the disgusting foxes that come an urinate on articles round the garden.

We used to have a great little fox terrier that could run up trees to kill cats. Shades of mate Willem.

A cow ate all the wiring, plug & all, off my trailer once.
If I had been pulled up, reckon I would have had trouble explaining it.

Seen a black panther in the South East (SA) once, near Narracorte. No-one believes me. Everyone just says that the sheep climb the tree before they die with half their flesh ripped off, and that it was just legend that the US soldiers brought a couple over in the earlier years as mascots and left them here.

Was wither a black panther or a friggin massive black german shepherd with a long slender tail, a cat's head that just happend to run like a cheetah.

In the late 60's we saw an animal which resembled a thylacene (Tasmanian Tiger) right down to the dark stripes on its flanks. This was on my girlfriend's (now Wife's) parents farm in the South East of SA. We were driving along a track when we saw something on the side of a nearby slope. I sighted the animal through the telescopic sights of the rifle we had with us and was amazed at what I saw. I then passed the rifle to my girlfriend so she could witness it too.

Even had a researcher come out from Kingston and measure and photograph the paw prints it left as it loped off into the scrub.

Now I'm not going to claim it was definitely a Tassy Tiger, but it was exactly like photographs we have since seen of that very animal.

I'm game.

In the mid nineties I was near Tintanara in SA driving the back blocks when what can best be described as two rather large kangeroos with long hair "walked" across the road in front of me - I was the only witness.

Also in the mid nineties I was surveying an area of the Grampians in quiet area (I had the rangers key) when something that looked like a black dog with the face of a pig ran across in front of the vehicle - One other witness but he refuses to talk about it.

Both times I was sober :)

Had a dingo nick one of my boots from outside the tent around Purnie Bore. It was retreived about 100m away the next morning.
Have had a big brown snake and a huge echidna on my verandah at night. The brown was very cautiosly made unwelcome. He must have told his mate because the echidna was trying to hide behind a woodpile. Fat chance. He got his head in, but the rest of his huge body with the white tipped spines couldn't be missed. Until then I thought echidnas were little fellas.
Killed a red belly black in the kitchen one night. Someone had left the back door open.
These days I'm more sedate. If it don't live with me, SWMBO won't let me touch it, no matter how wild it is :))

Yeh, well I saw a blackfella washing his car the other day and know one belives me either!

When I was a lad of 18 I used to go spotlighting rabbits, on my own, on foot, with a motorbike battery on my back and the spotlight mounted on the .22 rifle barrel.

I was out one night near Yackandandah in NE Victoria. The spot was on a paddock about 10km out of town, where the creek that flows right through town, crosses the dirt road. On the upstream side of town. I s'pose it's the Yackandandah Creek.

Anyway, I glimpsed something white, about 50metres ahead, just as it crouched down in the tussocks. There was a light breeze blowing and the tingles went down my neck. It was then that I first understood the expression: "put the wind up me."

So I kept the spotlight on the spot and krept cautiously toward the spot. Wasn't going to turn my back on it.

Then, when I was about three or four metres short of the spot, it jumped up and cleared off at great speed. Frightened the livin' daylights out of me.It was a wild cat, as big as a cattle dog.

There are breakaways cut back into the creek banks from the alluviual gold mining days, full of blackberries among the bush. I suppose the cat lived in there.

I've just recently returned from a lone camping and photography trip to outback South Australia, traveling on my ATV (four wheel motorbike). On my ATV Camping Trip website there is a story of a wild animals in the night as well as several other stories.

I reckon I camped in the exact spot of the camp of John McDouall Stuart at Andamooka Waterhole and I found one of his discarded horse shoes. But that storie is still to be written.

Regards,
Laurie.

Black Panther at Big River - Near Stockmans Reward...

Not quite what you're after Jeff but the most weird for me was a horse that mistook my British racing green Cortina for a big juicy bush and took a bloody great chomp at it. Ended up selling it with the teeth marks still there!

6 year old going to the toilet in the middle of night walking into Dingo at Palm Valley NT. Dingo howled, child fell back into tent distressed, parent felt guilty sending child to toilet which was straight across from tent, in middle of night by herself even though only a couple of people at camping ground at time.
Seal on beach on Fraser Island and no we were not drinking. Witnessed by number of people on beach at the time.

A mate and I were travelling the GRR in 2004 and couldn't get a campsite at Bells Gorge (it was July) travlled onto Imitji Roadhouse, where the owner told us of a campspot about 10kms before the mornington rd TO. Got there just before dusk, set up a beut campspot in new growth bush.

After dinner AND ONLY ONE TINNIE went for a wlak down to the Dam we had seen on the way in. I took my .30 with me, in case of an attack by a hoop snake. On approaching the dam my mate spotlighted a really big dog that lloked to us just like a Hyena.

Was to shocked to get off a shot even after its second exposure on the other side of Dam, it was in no hurry to leave.

We returned to the camp and fought over who would have the .30 or the .177 in the swags that night.... I won.

We have both just had a reunion in Brisbane and it came up again in fron of my wife and his girlfriend who both put it down to the Grog.

My husband was out in the middle of a paddock on his own one day bending down chainsawing a log. He jumped a mile in the air when something tapped him on the shoulder - and turned around to find a big emu standing behind him. A neighbour had a couple of pet emus who went AWOL and had turned up on our place.

Coming back from Mt.Gambier to Melbourne 2 weekends ago, travelling between Dartmor and Hamilton and saw a strange looking dog run across the highway going between pine plantations. It was a very remote spot and the dog reminded me of the dog in the Jim Carey movie "The Mask" after the dog put on the mask.
The head on this thing was about 3 times too big for the rest of the body and appeared from the distance (less than 100m) to be sporting a mane, shortish thick tale and definitely not a feline.

Travelling a little bit further north to the eastern slopes of the Grampians we used to spend a weekend per month for years in the same series of paddocks,east of the old gold mining township of Mafeking. We were only shooting rabbits and the odd fox and had the permission of the owner who was a Doctor in Hamilton.
I remember we used to see an extroadinary number of shooting stars at night and just put it down to the fact that we were away from the city and in clear country air.
One time we had a pair of binoculars and looked up into the sky (night time) and were amazed to say the least at the amount of "shooting stars" that were flying around in circles, figures of eight, 90 degree right and left hands and that these were only visible with the aid of the binoculars. There were usually around a half dozen of us and we all saw them.
It didn't perturb us at all and we continued to frequent the same place until one warm summer night when around midnight or later we decided to go and do a bit of spotlight shooting.
We had only moved about 30metres from our camp fire when the entire paddock of say 30 acres was bathed in the brightest of lights which were shining down behind us less than 100m away and approx 20m above the ground.
We all turned around to see these lights above the trees and were attached to some crescent shape above the tree line.
The lights shown down on us for what I would say was 15 seconds then went off.
Later on when I think about this, two questions remain to gnaw away.

1. Not one person in our group has said a word about these lights in conversation between us or with anyone else (apart from my wife).
2. After going to this spot monthly for many, many years, not one of our group even went there again. We all made the same silent decision not to return.

But wait there's more...

Same time, same place, I was rabbiting with a friend in the same paddock as above when we both heard what sounded to be very heavy thumping sounds on the ground coming straight towards us. We both took several steps backwards eventhough we were clearly in the open and could see nothing in front of us. We both felt that something had hurried towards us and had stopped just short, but we couldn't see a thing. There was nothing there. The thumping was quite loud and could be felt through the ground and then stopped basically where we were standing.

Funny place alright, and I guarantee you no drinks or drugs.

Cheers.

Sandman ref reply 8

I believe you,,, similar experience in Adelaide hills thick bush in early 1960's never bother to talk about it no one believes but still vivid for me.

Shooting rabbits about 1966 just on dusk sat down under a hugh gum tree to see where rabbits were running so i could set traps,,,, about 3 minutes later a fox about 3 meters away exploded into life,,, he was also watchin the rabbits,,,scared the S*** out of me.

Barry

Shaker,

I dont know about you, but if you were in the Kimberely, and witnesses a large dog over 80kgs in weight, looking like a Hyena, which clearly was not afraid of men, and you had a rifle... what would you do. It was clearly not native i.e Dingo.

Point is we didn't shoot it as we were so shocked.

Another one from the X files.

A mate and I were camping in the Coongan River, 30kms out of Marble Bar in the Pilbara. I woke up, bolt upright out of my swag at 4am, and about 30 degrees above the Eastern Horizon wee three lights exactly equal distant apart about 2 kms away, not moving just hovering. I blinked, looked again, clarified what I had seen, and then went back to sleep.

At 6 am I was woken by my mate kicking over coals,and the first thing he asked me was had I seen the min min lights during the night, I said, did you see them also, which he had said they had only disappeared 30 minutes before.

We constantly laugh about the lights now.

Certainly some interesting stories here. What stands out is the lack of photos or physical evidence.
However, many were before the advent of cheap and easy photography, and in others people were too shocked to care much I guess.
If I'd just met a little green man I doubt if I'd be making plaster casts of his footprints, checking for radiation or anything else. I'd be too far away to worry.

Two mice have been seen by some members doing something too...

Hi Jeff,

Spent a couple of weeks bush camping across the Gulf of Carpentaria back in about 95 without any probs or encounters. We ended up spoiling ourselves in a flash new joint in Darwin when we got there. I raced in to the loo of our 3rd floor apartment where the wife was sitting with feet up screaming COACKROACH KILL IT !!! When I got to the offender it turned out to be a scorpion. Pickled it with the only thing I had at the time, what a waste of Jack Daniels that was.

Regards, Trevor.

Was out fox shooting one night in Sth Gippsland, and actually chased one into the bush.
Run into the scrub with my .222, mate had the spottie on these huge eyes , and shyte myself, when I realised that my little rifle would be no match..
It made another run for it, and we looked in awe, at the speed at which it covered the ground..
At the time ther were numerous repotted sightings around Hallston.

Glen and I had been looking after about 6 farms in the area for 8 years or so, and over the years had never seen anything like it .

Cheers Mate
Bucky