Northern Territory Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger) Sighting Reports

Reports from other states and countries can be accessed here.

NT.1705.xx.xx

VOC Councillors Hendrick Swaardecroon and Cornelis Chastelijn:

Original Dutch: "dat de Patsjallang door bovengenoende felle stroomen en hol water niet verder dorste voortvaren, maar genootsaakt was na Vossenbosch terug te keeren, hebbende alvorens binnen desen boezem een eijland van vijf mijlen in het rond gevonden, daar zeer goed drinkwater en ook een tijger ontdekt is;..." (p. 200)

Source: Swaardecroon, H. and Chastelijn, C. (1856 [1705]). Verslag eener reis naar de noordkust van Nieuw Holland in 1705. Met aanteekeningen. [‘Report of a voyage to the north coast of New Holland in 1705. With Notes’]. Bijdragen tot de Taal, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië 5: 193-202 [200].

English translation (by Tent): "because the Patsjallang, owing to the strength of the above-mentioned currents and hollow seas, did not dare proceed further, but was obliged to return to the Vossenbosch, having beforehand found inside this inlet an island of 5 miles in circumference, on which very good drinking water and also a tiger was discovered;" (p. 8)

Source: Tent, Jan. (2023). Historic placenames as a source in identifying bygone faunal distributions: A double-edged sword. Preprint.

Discussion:

Tent (2023:7):

"The only other researcher to have pondered the meaning of Tijgers-hoek is Gerritsen (2015), who, in a very brief chapter in his posthumously in-house published short compendium, raises a few of the issues presented above. He proposes that van Delﬅ’s men genuinely did see a thylacine on Waterplaets (Greenhill Island), and that they still might exist in isolated places and nearby islands, based on the unsubstantiated assumption they survived into the eighteenth century and beyond. Despite the lack of concrete and veriﬁable evidence of their continued existence elsewhere in Australia, the thylacine’s sustained presence remains a contentious issue (see Paramonov 1967, Douglas 1990, Healy and Cropper 1994, Paddle 2000)."

References:

Gerritsen, R. (2015). Early Encounters with Australian Shores. Australia on the Map (AOTM), Canberra.

NT.XXXX.xx.xx

Gilbert P. Whitley:

"Other Dutch voyagers came to Australia between 1705 and 1765 but left no natural history records, unless we except a "tiger" from an island off the Northern Territory, reported in the former year by J. C. Craine in the Vossenboch (sic)." (p. 30)

Source: Whitley, Gilbert P. (1970). Early History of Australian Zoology. Sydney: Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales. [30MB file]

Discussion: "Vossenboch" is an error for "de Vossenbosch" (Holmes & Lee, 2023:59).

References:

Holmes, Branden Keith and Lee, Chris. (2023). Paterson's enigmatic female and other early European records of the thylacine, pp. 59-61. In: Holmes, Branden and Linnard, Gareth (eds.). Thylacine: The History, Ecology and Loss of the Tasmania. Clayton South, Melbourne: CSIRO Publishing. xxxiv + 205 pp.