Page 82 - Tropic Magazine Issue 17

TROPIC • REGIONAL HISTORY
Tamed by the Tully
TIGER HUNT
How the Tully River thwarted
an explorer’s pursuit to prove
the existence of a marsupial
tiger in north Queensland.
Words Renee Cluff
82 • Tropic • Issue 17
The year was 1923 and Mr Reginald
Kendall was in north Queensland
searching for a large dog-sized
‘bloodthirsty’ marsupial, with
tiger-like stripes.
On his fourth day on the northern side
of the Tully River, he was contemplating
how to get his camping gear across,
along with his guns, traps and a large
python he’d captured.
Mr Kendall’s story appeared in
almost every Queensland newspaper
at the time.
“I had almost decided to hide my outfit
and make the trip to Cardwell and
back that day, when I remembered the
specimen I wanted to send down to In a panicked endeavour to swim away
Sydney,” he wrote. from the reptile, Mr Kendall said
“But if it was possible to take one he pushed the raft away.
thing across on a log, why not the rest, “I was washed beneath the overhanging
though on a raft?” branches of a banyan tree, which I
He set to, making a raft from logs and grasped, and pulled myself up to
lawyer vine, which couldn’t hold his safety, just as my raft drifted into
weight, but could be used to transport mid-stream and turned turtle on the
his things. rocks,” he wrote.
“All went well ‘til I reached the centre of It’s safe to say all his belongings,
the river and then the stronger current including the all-important specimen,
swung my craft broadside on. were lost.
“I ceased my exertions for a moment to And while it’s not known exactly
see how far the rocks were off, and it what the specimen was, records show
was a lucky thing for me that I did, that at the end of 1923’s ‘Great North
for just at that moment, the hideous Queensland Tiger Hunt’, Mr Kendall
snout of a crocodile rose up, not ten returned to Sydney with his tail
yards downstream.” between his legs.