Questions remain over Tantanoola tiger 130 years after it was shot dead

Australia Broadcast Center

17 hours ago

Even 130 years after the death of the so-called "Tantanoola tiger", there are still questions over what type of animal it was, who actually shot it and how it came to roam the south-east of South Australia.
Unlike other "big cats" supposedly on the loose around Australia, the Tantanoola tiger is real — and can be seen at the Tantanoola Tiger Hotel.
The Tantanoola Tiger was shot on August 21, 1895, by Tom Donovan — if what was published in the Border Watch newspaper at the time is to be believed.
Local author Neville Bonney is about to put out the third edition of his book The Tantanoola Tiger, which was first published almost 50 years ago.
"There's conjecture of the man who shot the tiger," he says.
"I'm not going to say any more on that because that comes out in the book, but I can tell you now it's very doubtful if that person shot the tiger."
The first reports of seeing a "tiger" in the area came in 1893, along with worries about sheep being eaten and cattle being attacked.
It was immediately connected with other reports that a tiger had escaped from a circus travelling between Robe and Mount Gambier 10 years earlier.
Mr Bonney says there was a real fear among the community.
"I mean, children were escorted to Tantanoola school each day because they were frightened that they might get marauded on the way," he says.
Federation University associate professor of history David Waldron, who wrote a book on Australian big cat folklore called Snarls from the Tea Tree, says the search for the Tantanoola tiger was a "national phenomenon", having occurred soon after the establishment of the telegraph, which allowed information to spread much more quickly than before.
Soon, he says, there were advertisements for safari suits to catch a tiger in, and guns to shoot it with.
"There was actually times … [when] so many people were employed out looking for tigers that they had trouble finding personnel [to help] deal with a boat that went down off the coast of Robe," Dr Waldron says.
Victoria, for its part, has its own folklore surrounding big cat sightings.
One of the most notable legends is the Otways panther. There was also a puma shot in St Arnaud in 1924 that had escaped from a circus.
While in Gippsland, a very large dingo-dog that was shot in 1936 became known as the "Beast of Briagolong".
"It's a story that's really deeply enmeshed in Australian folk culture," Dr Waldron says.
Just three days after the Tantanoola tiger was killed in 1895, it was put on display for people to pay to see in Mount Gambier.
The taxidermist that stuffed it declared it to be a European wolf, while others called it a Syrian wolf, or an Assyrian wolf.
Some thought it looked more like a dingo, an idea that Dr Waldron believes is most plausible.
"I've had wildlife experts look at it and they're all quite convinced it's an alpine dingo, and when you look at an alpine dingo next to it, it quite clearly is," he says.
Dr Waldron says the wolf idea was a reference from a poem written by Lord Byron in 1815 about the Assyrians' siege of Jerusalem in 701 BC.
"If you actually have a look at a wolf, it's a very distinct animal, not least of which there is no such thing as an Assyrian wolf which is what they called it in the papers, throwing in the Biblical reference," he says.
It is not a Bengal tiger like the one on top of the Tantanoola Tiger Hotel, where the Tantanoola tiger has been on display in a cabinet since 1947, when Mr Donovan sold it to the then-owner.
Mr Bonney says what the tiger is is not the point.
"It doesn't matter," he says.
"It's still the Tantanoola tiger."
If the Tantanoola tiger is a wolf, there has not yet been an explanation as to how it got to live in South Australia's south-east.
One speculation is that it survived one of the shipwrecks that were common on the coast nearby in the 19th century.
Rebecca Day, who took over running the Tantanoola tiger Hotel with her husband Shaun in 2023, wonders about it.
"I actually felt kind of sorry for him," she says.
She says tourists regularly come in to have a look at the creature.
"Not just Australians from different states but people from overseas as well," she says.
"They come down to Mount Gambier and they go to the visitor centres — and in Millicent — and they say 'you've got to go see the tiger down at Tantanoola' and they go 'tiger, what tiger?' and they come in and go 'whoa!'"
Mr Bonney's book is set to come out in October or November.
He says it will have more detail and nuance than the previous two editions, including about the second appearance of the sheep-killing "tiger" that turned out to be a man — Robert Charles Edmondson — who was convicted of sheep stealing and sentenced to six years' hard labour in 1911.
The owner of the sheep was James Chant, Mr Bonney's great-grandfather.