Thylacine (10 page)

The Big River tribe, the people of the central plateau, occupied some 8000 square kilometres of mostly prime territory. Snarers' records for the plateau, collated by Guiler, indicate an average home range of about 80 square kilometres per thylacine family group of, say, six: two adults and four young in various stages of dependency. Was there, then, a general average of about one hundred families, being some 600 thylacines, on the central plateau?

What is more than likely is that the thylacine population and distribution on the central plateau waxed and waned over long periods of time, governed by both climatic and human influence. Evidence comes from archaeological excavations at two plateau rock shelters. The Warragarra shelter, first occupied by people about 10 000 years ago as forests claimed elevated areas previously under glaciers, is thought to have initially served the function of ‘an ephemeral hunting camp'.
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Faunal remains include wallaby, pademelon, bettong, brushtail and ringtail possums: all standard thylacine prey as well.

By about 4000 years ago, however, warmer and moister conditions had turned the area into largely uninhabitable rainforest. The archaeological layers for this period are blank. Warragarra was unoccupied for some thousands of years; it is reasonable to assume that thylacines were also driven from the region.

Warragarra was re-inhabited as climatic conditions similar to today's again took over. As well, the people of the Big River Tribe of the central plateau began the practice of land management through fire, creating more open vegetation cover at the expense of forests in order to increase browsing prey populations. Drier conditions suit firing. That they were dry is proved by the addition to Warragarra of eastern grey kangaroo bones; the island's only kangaroo is restricted to the drier eastern parts.

Slightly further east, the Parmepar Meethaner rock shelter, in a valley which escaped glaciation, was more or less continuously occupied from about 34 000 years ago, subject to forest movement. Wallaby, again, is the main food item. And, again, for the people of the region firing practices became regular, ‘producing corridors of more open vegetation and thus facilitating both increased travel and settlement'.
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This is another instance of creating conditions favourable to thylacines. It should not be considered remarkable that maps of the island showing locations of tribal bands, of important hunting grounds, and of later thylacine bounty claims, are similar. Thylacines concentrated in those areas where their main prey was most abundant and where climatic conditions were suitable.

The phenomenon of land management through firing is most evident in the third geographic region, the midland plain. This is the flat, broad expanse between Launceston and Hobart, blessed with rivers running north and south, and neatly bounded by hills and mountains to either side known as the Eastern and Western Tiers. Aborigines managed it by repeated firing practice, possibly removing the original forest cover and so creating the island's biggest kangaroo hunting grounds, at today's Campbell Town and the Norfolk Plains. The midland plain was shared by bands of the Oyster Bay, North Midlands and Ben Lomond Tribes. (All across the island, band and tribal boundaries were strictly observed. Unwarranted transgressions caused bad blood, and friction between neighbouring bands and tribes was not uncommon. Visiting rights and sharing of resources—food, ochre for body decoration, inebriating cider gum sap—were much more important.)

Some of the island's driest areas are to be found on the midland plain. While many of its inhabitants had no direct access to the coast, the inland rivers were a valuable source of food, augmented by a wide variety of vegetable matter and the ubiquitous kangaroo, wallaby and possum. The rising Tiers, with their lightly wooded cover, were excellent territory for thylacines, being close to their prey source while ensuring a good choice of dens, be they under a rock overhang, in a hollow log or a manufactured nest under a scrub canopy.

The final geographic region is the east coast and south-east peninsulas. The coastal fringe rising to the Eastern Tier provided good thylacine hunting territory. Settler landowners on the mid-east coast were later to claim that thylacines were in such plague proportions that, as had been the case for the north-west Van Diemen's Land Company, they were threatening the entire sheep industry. A letter written in 1826 and sent from Oyster Bay stated bluntly that ‘tigers are plentifull amongst the rocky mountains and destroy many sheep and lambs'.
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Thylacines were also known to favour both the Forestier and Tasman Peninsulas, with their landscapes ranging from long beaches—thylacines liked beaches—to small plains, the lightly covered Tiers and thickly forested slopes. One likes to imagine that thylacines watched the antics of Abel Tasman and his men in December 1642, anchored off the Forestier Peninsula, territory of the Oyster Bay's Pydai-rerme band.

Thylacines would inevitably have been caught in wallaby snares or kangaroo-spear traps: what to do with such a catch? Some Aboriginal bands ate the thylacine, according to Robinson's diary. Others may have respected the animal, as the story of Corinna seems to suggest, placing not only a taboo on eating it but possibly some act of contrition for killing it. The true relationship between the Trowenna peoples and the thylacine will probably never be known, but it features in no midden or rock shelter as faunal remains, and the possibility of its having occupied a special and therefore protected place in the island's human-managed ecosystem is a compelling one.

7 A LAND IN
NEED OF
TAMING . . .

Several sheep and lambs were dead; others had lumps of flesh hanging from their bodies and their throats oozing with blood. Some were tangled in fences and torn to pieces. In all, forty dead and others had to be destroyed. Surely this was the murderous work of the tiger that had been sighted on the property only a few days before . . . The following morning, very early, there was a commotion down on the flats. Sheep were bleating and running in all directions. It was not yet light enough to see the tiger that was attacking them but two gunshots disturbed the dawn. ‘He won't kill any more sheep,' said my father as he approached the culprit. A large shaggy dog. The other one was wounded and got away . . .

O
WEN
H
OUSE,
E
AST
D
EVONPORT

A few nights ago a hyena tiger, an animal so rarely seen in this Colony, but of the largest size, was found in the sheep-fold of G. W. Gunning, Esq. J.P. Coal River.—Four Kangaroo dogs, which were thrown in upon him, refused to fight, and he had seized a lamb, when a small terrier of the Scotch breed was put in and instantly seized the animal, and, after a severe fight, to the astonishment of everyone present, the terrier succeeded in killing his adversary.

(
H
OBART
T
OWN
G
AZETTE
AND
V
AN
D
IEMEN
'
S
L
AND
A
DVERTISER
,
S
ATURDAY 8
A
UGUST 1823)

E
ven after twenty years of settlement in Van Diemen's Land, written references to thylacines were few. The animal, it seems, was rarely sighted by the European newcomers. According to one account, just four were seen in the Hobart region over that period.
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Yet contradictions were already becoming apparent. Was it rare or plentiful in the wilds? Was there an ‘opossum-hyaena' and also a ‘panther'? Did either or both of these prey on sheep?

Early in his diary the Reverend Robert Knopwood had written, ‘I make no doubt but here are many wild animals which we have not yet seen'; he had also noted that absconded and recaptured convicts were the first to see the thylacine. Given that most of these men were poorly educated, and possibly prone to exaggeration, it is little wonder that a myth might have developed around the wraith-like stripey beast. Nocturnal, huge of gape, capable of menacing hiss-like coughs and barks: how tempting it must have been for these hard men to embellish their tales of the creature.

As the bush's very wildness rendered it friend and ally to increasing numbers, however, the colony's de facto seat of power transferred from Hobart Town and Port Dalrymple to the huts, caves and territories of the bushrangers, and Van Diemen's Land slid into lawlessness even as its permanence as a European settlement became a tangible reality. Gangs of escaped and emancipated convicts and corrupt soldiers, all well armed and attended by packs of hunting dogs, helped themselves to the produce of the strips and patches of river-hugging land cultivated by free settlers. They destroyed, raped and stole almost at will, compounding the difficulties already faced by the more law-abiding. Worse, the gangs were given considerable comfort by some free settlers, so that the job of the authorities was made that much more difficult.
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Van Diemen's Land was not a place of sentiment, less still a place where an animal of little economic value might be judged on its merits. Instead, the thylacine came to be branded with a reputation from which it was never to recover. If it is true that dingoes led to its mainland extinction, then it is also true that the spread of feral dogs played a significant part in its downfall in the island. Kangaroo dogs were bred in profusion because of their importance in securing food for the young colony. In the early years in particular, dog theft was a very serious offence. Bush-rangers and Aborigines kept dogs in large packs. Many went feral. The extent of their harassment of the fledgling sheep industry, for which harassment the thylacine was held at least equally responsible, can only be guessed at.

The thylacine represented one element of the wildness to be tamed, and its turn would come. Until then, bushrangers and Aborigines, crop failures, disease, drought and licentiousness were enough to be going on with, let alone that the struggling island colony continued to receive the dregs of the New South Wales convicts and was in other ways poorly treated by the parent colony. Yet change would inevitably occur and it happened through a combination of the island's natural bounty, its charms from a distance and the introduction of a horrifying system of isolated penal settlements. The grand plan, of ridding England of its convicts and then using their labour to supply the mother country with quality Van Diemen's Land timber and, especially, wool, could not be held back. Had the grand plan instead involved potatoes, apples or cattle, the thylacine might today be as abundant as the Tasmanian devil.

Important though crops were (wheat, barley, beans, peas, potatoes) livestock—particularly sheep—played a far greater role in opening up the colony. The first boatload of sheep in 1803 numbered a few dozen. By 1820 there were about 200 000 grazing the midlands between Hobart and Launceston, and by 1830, when the first sheep-protecting thylacine bounty was introduced, the total was over a million—now also spread across the north and north-west. Conditions were particularly favourable along the vital link between the two population centres, the midland plain, so much so that Surveyor-General Evans marvelled that the island appeared to have been in a state of civilisation and cultivation for centuries—which of course it had, thanks to Aboriginal fire management practices.

Evans's 1822
Description of Van Diemen's Land
, with its subtitle
With important hints to emigrants, and useful information
respecting the application for grants of land; together with a list of the
most necessary articles for persons to take out
proved a highly effective marketing tool, going into a second edition in 1824 and being translated into French and German. Free settlers, mostly British, began to arrive in numbers which significantly increased a population which, at the time of the book's first publication, was just 1500 souls. Van Diemen's Land was becoming a viable alternative to New South Wales. Indeed, Evans wrote of its ‘great superiority' over the parent colony:

Large tracts of land, perfectly free from timber or underwood, and covered with the most luxuriant herbage, are to be found in all directions . . . These tracts of land are invariably of the very best description, and millions of acres, which are capable of being instantly converted to all the purposes of husbandry, still remain unappropri-ated. Here the colonist has no expense to incur in clearing his farm: he is not compelled to a great preliminary outlay of capital, before he can expect a considerable return.
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Such glowing references were sufficient to encourage the London-based Van Diemen's Land Company shortly thereafter to embark on its disastrous sheep farming enterprise, on vast acreages then totally unsuited to pastoralism. But, as will be seen, thylacines came to be demonised for the Company's failures. It is true that Evans tempered his glowing account with the assertion that ‘the panther . . . commits dreadful havoc among the flocks', but the fact is that at the time of that book's publication there had been just two recorded accounts of thylacines attacking sheep.

How economical was Evans being with the truth? Writing not much later, historian John West had a rather different view of that same period:

The narrow grants and wretched homesteads of the emancipist cotters, the sole farmers at this time of immigration, presented but little to please. The settler, whose imagination pictured the rustic beauties and quiet order of an English farm, saw unfenced fields of grain, deformed with blackened stumps; a low cottage of the meanest structure, surrounded by heaps of wool, bones, and sheepskins; mutton and kangaroo strung on the branches of trees; idle and uncleanly men, of different civil condition, but of one class; and tribes of dogs and natives. No green hedges or flowery meadows, or notes of the thrush or nightingale; but yet there was the park-like lands, the brilliant skies, the pure river and the untainted breath of morning.
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