Last Thylacine Tasmanian Tiger Caught.
A leisurely scenic drive up the Derwent Valley past New Norfolk, Westerway and National Park
Tasmania's oldest national park, Mt Field National Park, takes you to Tyenna and on towards its largest park, the World Heritage-listed South West National Park. It was here that Frank Marriott along with Robert Marriott and later his three sons Robert, Elias ans Charles) explored, surveyed and made tracks for the first time ever.
The families’ holdings were initially around Tyenna towards the Marriott falls.
From Col Bailey’s research:In the 1880's civilisation extended to Tyenna, originally a private selection and wilderness home of the pioneering Marriott family. A few years previously the Marriott boys had hacked their way through the thick blackwood forests lining the Russell Falls River (Now the Tyenna River) to take up a large selection of rich virgin river flats and undulating country hosting some of the largest and tallest swamp gums on the planet.
It took a special breed of men to be able to adapt to, and endure the often atrocious conditions that nature slung at them in this vast untamed wilderness.
Such were the trappers and snarers, best described as the forerunners to the legendary Tasmanian bushman. Men of the calibre of Elias Churchill and Jack Mullins of the Upper Derwent Valley town of Ouse, who between them kept the Hobart Zoo
supplied with Tasmanian tigers for many years. Others like John McCallum of National Park and Robert and Frank Marriott from Tyenna who knew the south west like the back of their hand .... and a host of others like them all contributed to the local folklore.
Churchill's vast knowledge and experience of the Tasmanian tiger gained over many years earnt him a legendary reputation as an authority on the elusive striped animal.
He laid claim to have taken at least eight tigers alive in the South Western area of the State. All were taken in snares, but many other tigers were caught and later destroyed owing to self inflicted injuries incurred while attempting to escape.
Four of Churchill's live tigers were caught in the Florentine Valley, north of the Tiger Range, while others were taken in the Rasselas Valley, the Needles, at Mt Bowes and on the South Gordon Track. Several of the tigers were later sold to the Hobart Zoo, then run by the Hobart City Council.Col Bailey : http://www.maydena.tco.asn.au/Colbail/tiger.html
The following text:
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THE LAST TASMANIAN TIGER
by Robert Paddle 2000
printed by Brown Prior Anderson
PAGE 83- excerpt
"No specific instances of predation on horses in the wild have been recorded
in the literature, although Krefft again considered the thylacine a most
ferocious and formidable animal, which will soon overpower even a ....Horse!
For some people, however, such predation was a real possibility
to be feared. Mrs Edith Gossage recalls a story from her father Charles
Marriott, working with the Great Western Railway survey party in 1908: the
surveyors kept a fire going all night to prevent thylacines from coming too
close to the camp where there were horses.... that could become prey"
(correspondence 24/8/1981) Edith Gossage
PAGE 191
"The Last Tiger to be caught in Tasmania was a way up behind
Fitzerald-Tyenna way by a Mr Churchill. Once its sale to Hobart Zoo had been
arranged, the thylacine was trussed up, placed on the back of a pack horse
and taken to Tyenna where it was placed in a cage to be railed to Hobart.
Edith L Gossage remembers how, as a young girl, she saw the tiger that was being
sent to the Hobart Zoo. It had been caught out the back of Maydena by
E.Churchill and was being transported by train to Hobart we were allowed to
peep at it in its cage in the Guard's van.(correspondence 24/8/1981)" Edith GossageAnd from Patsy Adam Smith:
The Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacinus cyanocephalus) was first described by Harris in “proceedings of the Linnaes Society, London,” in 1808. Probably the largest flesh-eating marsupial ever evolved, the Thylacine was alternatively called the Tasmanian wolf or marsupial wolf because of its resemblance to a short-legged wolf, but mainly it was known as the Tasmanian or marsupial tiger because of the sixteen or so blackish-brown stripes that ran across its grey- brown back and rump. The early Tasmanian settlers called it many things when it began raiding their imported flocks of sheep, but also knew it as a zebra opossum, zebra wolf, and hyena. Some said that when it was hard pressed it would hop like a kangaroo to gain impetus; this seemed possible considering its marsupial nature was emphasized in a kangaroo-like rump and tall and the pronounced heel on its hind leg Some early writers say that it “rarely attacked man” but give no account of any actual attack. Its diet consisted of almost any other animal or bird it could find in the bush - marsupial rats, ground birds, rabbits, spiny-anteaters, sheep, and poultry.“When excited”, the early settlers recorded, “it gives a series of guttural cough-like barks”. Patsy Adam Smith, “Tiger Country” Rigby Ltd Adelaide.