Tantanoola, a tiny town in South Australia's southeast, earns its tourism stripes on tale of tiger in wolf clothing
The 1947 premiership Tantanoola Tigers football team, in Sout Australian southeast, with their stuffed tiger (that wasn't tiger but a wolf) mascot.
The Tantanoola Tiger was immortalised by Adelaide poet Max Harris in his 1945 poem. But the rumoured Bengal tiger that had supposedly escaped a visiting circus and was killing sheep by the dozen around Tantanoola, a tiny town in South Australia’s southeast, had captured Australia-wide attention from the early 1890s.
In November 1891, in the rough country 30km northwest of Mount Gambier, Aboriginal shearers working on grazier John Cameron’s property at German Creek were scared by a strange wild animal. At nearby Tantanoola, in December 1892, Walter Taylor and his wife were driving home in their horse buggy when they saw a strange animal slinking across the road.
More sightings followed and several property owners reported finding sheep eaten, leaving only bloody skins and bones licked clean. The phantom predator was soon dubbed “The Tantanoola Tiger” by newspapers across Australia.
Locals were worried that soon creature would become a maneater. In May 1893, sheep station manager John Livingston convinced nearly two dozen men to join him in a search of German Creek area and Nitschke’s Ti-Tree thicket. Much beating around the bush only turned up a black swan on a nest and some wallabies. In September 1893, farmer William Johns of Vulcan Park was woken at 2am by his dogs and chickens. He found big paw prints 11cm across. Next day, a policeman took plaster casts, that he sent to Adelaide Zoo. A zoologist compared them to a tiger and a Saint Bernard and found it was likely the Tantanoola countryside creature wasn’t feline but canine.
In October 1893, the nightmare appeared over. Millicent man Kenny Mathison poisoned a huge feral pig he reckoned had killed 200 sheep a year on his property alone. But something continued killing sheep and leaving big paw prints. Through 1895, there were sightings of the Tantanoola Tiger every month or so, including several around German Creek’s Duckhole Swamp.
Bush hunter Thomas Donovan, from Nelson, on the Glenelg River, eventually tracked down and shot a large animal killing sheep around Mount Salt in August 1895. Donovan took the body to Mount Gambier and a taxidermist named Marks. The dozens who crowded around the taxidermist’s shop hoping to glimpse the creature agreed it was a European (later determined to be an Arabian) wolf.
Donovan received about eight or nine telegrams from Adelaide offering to buy the wolf but he kept it, charging more than 400 people a shilling for a look. He later took it to Adelaide Zoo and displayed it in his hometown Nelson.
Enterprising Tantanoola publican Vic Willshire later bought the stuffed creature to be displayed at what was renamed Tantanoola Tiger Hotel. The town's football club in the early 1900s nicknamed themselves the Tigers. Winning the grand final in 1947, the team hauled their stuffed mascot out onto the grass for the official photograph.
The tiger remained Tantanoola’s biggest attraction until 1930 when a teenage from the town, Boyce Lane, was rabbit hunting when his ferret went chasing down a small hole in the nearby cliffs. Boyce returned with a torch and his brother to retrieve his ferret. They squeezed through the small hole, shone their flashlight about and saw a row of hanging stalactites.
The Tantanoola Caves, featuring a spectacular ancient dolomite display, became a major tourist draw within its conservation park.