CRYPTOLINK: Is the Tassie Tiger still spotted?

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Tony Black introducing film footage of one of the last Tasmanian tigers.

AS a journalist in Inverness, former Highland News reporter Tony Black did his fair share of Nessie stories.

When he moved to Australia, he found himself writing about another mysterious creature, the inspiration behind his newly published novel The Last Tiger.

Already an established and acclaimed crime writer, The Last Tiger takes Black into new territory with his first historical novel.

Set in Tasmania in the early 20th century, its hero, young Lithuanian immigrant Myko, develops a fascination with the island’s top predator, the Tasmanian tiger or thylacine, which is being hunted to extinction by the island’s settlers — including Myko’s own father.

The last known Tassie tiger died in captivity in Tasmania’s Hobart zoo in 1936.

However, when Australian-born Black returned to the country of his birth to work for a small rural paper, he soon found not everyone is convinced the Tassie tiger is no more, even in mainland Australia where the animal is reckoned to have died some 2000 years ago.

Working as a reporter, Black took a call from someone who claimed to have captured footage of a tiger near the outskirts of suburban Melbourne.

"He sent the footage over and it clearly wasn’t a dog or a panther," Black said.

"The only way I can describe it is that it’s almost like a quadruped kangaroo with the head of a dog.

Read on..