Big Cats Prowl Australian State

The recent sighting of a puma-like animal on a road near Cooktown has revived talk of hundreds of unexplained sightings of big cats in north Queensland. The Cooktown Cat was reported to be about 45cm (18in) high and 60cm (2ft) long, with a fluffy tail about 75cm (2ft6in) long with a curl on the end.

Joe Meaney and his wife, Yvonne say they saw the animal about 10km from Cooktown. "We saw this thing on the road and realised it was a cat. It turned and leapt from the centre of the road to the grass. It was a 5m leap like something in the movies. It was three times the size of a normal cat and had a big footprint."

Mr Meaney said the body was too long for a feral cat and was quite different from a quoll, a native marsupial cat. "People at Mt Amos (near Cooktown) often talk about these big cats and get ragged about it, so some don't mention it when they sight them." Peter Stapley, proprietor of the Cooktown News, photographed the footprint, which had remained on the wet ground. Mr Meaney said the animal looked something like a mountain lion, sandy in colour with darker colours and tufts of hair coming from its pointy ears.

Internationally renowned artist Percy Trezise, of Cairns, has been attempting to track and photograph the animal since he first sighted a single panther-like cat when he was only three, in Victoria. "I think there are three different marsupial carnivores that have evolved to hunt marsupials by starlight. They are seldom seen during the daylight," he said. Mr Trezise has a photograph taken on the Windsor Tablelands, north Queensland, of footprints of what he believes is a marsupial wolf. He says it looks like a wolf with a kangaroo-like tail. Mr Trezise believes there is a gene pool of the cats in the Daintree.

Barb Holdsworth, who lives at the isolated settlement of Portland Roads, near Iron Range National Park, Cape York, has been documenting big cat footprints in plaster of Paris for some years. "There are four varieties with different prints with big claws on the front paws," she said. "One is distinctive as it is a cat in every respect but the head is more like a dog." She has distinctly heard the purr of a big cat at night near her home.