Nothing new in black panther sightings.
Mercury Newspaper "Your say" section - No date 2001.
Sir,
With something like the "panther" sightings stirring up interest there's always someone who comes out and says they've seen it before.
But I swear that about four or five years ago my partner and I were driving along Waratah Ridge on the Newnes Plateau when something large, black and cat-like leapt out of the scrub about 20 metres in front of us.
The creature turned it's head to look at us in mid flight, landed, spun 180 degrees and sped off back into the bush faster than anything I've seen. At the time we said it looked like a panther and I'd estimate it stood a gnat's hair under a metre tall at the shoulder, so if it was just a super feral cat, it was the mother of them all.
I also remember a reported sighting about 4 months later out the back of Baal Bone colliery (by one of the washery workers?), of a large "Puma" which drew the attention of news crews.
But as far as I know, the story never went to air? Then there's always the old stories of the "Tarana Tiger" which have been circulating for years.
Craig Flynn.
Lithgow.
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