Carnivorous Nights_ On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger - Margaret Mittelbach [143]
He waved us over to a wooden picnic table and gave us his card. It read, “Col Bailey, thylacine consultant, author, researcher.” On it was a black-and-white photo of Col holding a pair of binoculars and appearing to stare at two thylacines in the background.
As we studied the card, he said, “I know without a doubt, 100 percent certain, that the tiger still exists. Just leave it at that.”
We sat across from Col, and he laid down a manila envelope on the table. We readied ourselves for some new evidence. “I really enjoyed reading your prospectus,” he said. He opened the envelope, and took out a neat stack of paper. It was a copy of our proposal for this very book with a full-color reproduction of one of Alexis's thylacine paintings on the cover.
Our eyes popped open. How had he gotten a copy of that?
“You're probably wondering where I got a copy of this.”
“Well … yes.”
He smiled a tiny smile. “I can't reveal my sources.”
As Col slowly paged through the proposal, we felt a surge of embarrassment. How had we described him? Did we call him a colorful Tasmanian character? Had we used the word “kooky”? Actually, we had introduced him as follows:
Bailey is a full-time tiger hunter, who lives in Maydena outside of Tasma-nia's Mount Field National Park. He is certain that Tasmanian tigers survive in the wild—although he has yet to prove it. As the director of the Tasmanian Tiger Research and Data Centre, he has documented and investigated a total of 3,200 eyewitness accounts.
“Where did you get this 3,200 number?” Col asked.
“Wasn't it on your Web site?” we said.
Col maintained a Web site where people could send in their sighting reports and contact him for information. And he got plenty of hits. As one of Tasmania's most visible tiger hunters, Col received constant media inquiries. He had appeared in several documentaries about the thylacine and been interviewed by hundreds of reporters. The media frenzy was not limited to Australia either. “Tons of Yanks hound me. The Japanese hound me. I get inquiries from Sweden, Germany, Italy, France. No Russians or Chinese yet. Sometimes I want to run away and hide.”
At home Col had carton after carton filled with newspaper clippings about the tiger—some of which he had written himself. He laughed. “I've been married for forty-four years, and I've been researching the Tassie tiger for nearly as long. My wife says, ‘Better you're messing about with the tiger and not with another woman.’”
“How did you originally get interested in the thylacine?”
“I saw a tiger in 1967.”
“Where?”
“I was canoeing along the Coorong.”
The Coorong? The Coorong coastline was on the Australian mainland where the thylacine had been extinct for thousands of years. At least that's what we'd been told.
Col knew the mainland location of his thylacine sighting might tend to undermine its credibility in certain circles.
“You may think that's strange to see a tiger over there, but I believe it was a tiger to this day. I spoke to a lot of people in southeastern South Australia that claimed to have seen the same animal.” In fact, the mainland had as many thylacine sightings as Tasmania did.
Col's 1967 sighting had a strong impact on his life. Not long afterward, he began flying down to Tasmania to interview Tasmanians about the tiger. For three decades Col tracked down trappers and bushies and people who claimed to have seen the animal. When he got tired of flying back and forth, he moved to Tyenna and started publishing