Mother claims she saw a huge black panther as ‘tall as a kitchen bench’ with a metre-long tail running by a remote dirt road in regional Victoria
- Driver said she saw giant black panther with metre long tail on remote dirt road
- Alleged sighting was in Mt Beauty, one hour drive south of Albury in Victoria
- There are rumours that a species of big cats roam around the Australian bush
- A 2013 Victorian inquiry said the sightings were probably of black feral felines
A mother has claimed to have spotted a giant black panther with a metre long tail on a remote dirt road in regional Victoria.
Amanda Dutton said the big cat ran out in front of her car on Saturday afternoon in Mt Beauty, a one hour drive south of Albury in Victoria.
There have long been rumours that a species of large black cats roam around remote areas of the Australian bush.
There have long been rumours of black panthers roaming around the Australian bush
Ms Dutton told the ABC she saw the cat when she was driving with her kids from a football game, and watched it run off a dirt road and into the bush.
‘It would have been as high as our kitchen bench,’ she said.
‘We had to pull up because we were so freaked out.
‘When we got to the Mitta Brewery I told my friends what happened and they laughed and said it was the Mitta panther.’
The sighting is one of many anecdotal sightings of mysterious large black cats seen in regional areas across Australia.
A 2012 inquiry into the existence of big cats in Victoria said people were probably spotting feral black cats.
A 2012 inquiry into big cats in Victoria said people were probably spotting feral cats
Michael Corr captured this photo in the Tootgarook wetlands in Victoria in September this year
A 36-year-old carpenter claimed to have spotted a black panther in a regional area of Victoria in January this year.
Michael Corr, 36, was walking through the Tootgarook wetlands, south-east of Melbourne with his 11-year-old son when he spotted the feline.
He managed to pull out his phone just in time to take a photo before the animal wandered into the snake-infested reeds.
‘I just thought that’s the biggest cat I’ve ever seen and it was just crossing the tracks as if it was stalking something,’ he told Daily Mail Australia.
‘My son ran in the other direction. We’ve been down there before and heard things rustling in the reeds but had never seen something like this.’
Mr Corr said that the animal definitely had the head of a cat and moved like a feline – adding there was no way he had mistaken it for a dog.
Paw prints (pictured) were spotted by a group of Blue Mountains trekkers in April
In New South Wales, a group of six trekkers found tracks they believed were from big cats in April this year during a hike in very remote parts of the Yerranderrie region west of Sydney.
The hikers believe the tracks were from a wild cat species derived from the offspring of feral and wild cats released into the bush in the 1940s and 50s.
George Kaplan, 23, said the team of six spent a week hiking in the deep south of the mountains away from any trails or tracks.
‘Where we were was completely isolated… to get there we had to abseil, we had to climb four of five different mountain tops, we were truly in the middle of nowhere,’ Mr Kaplan told Daily Mail Australia.
He said a few days into the walk, they came across a riverbed which water had receded from about 10 days earlier.
‘There were dog prints, pig prints, goanna prints, [and horse prints],’ Mr Kaplan said.
‘And one thing we kept seeing was big cat prints… after seeing these second lots of cats prints we started to get really excited, we thought if anywhere this was going to be a hotspot for big cats.’
A 2003 study in New South Wales said evidence that big cats roaming in the wilderness of the state was ‘inconclusive.’