Episode Details

The Lithgow Panther - Unsolved Australian Mystery

For over a century, something large and black has been moving through the sandstone gorges and eucalyptus forest west of Sydney. Farmers have found their sheep with broken necks and grass still between their teeth killed instantly, mid-graze. Carcasses have been discovered wedged in the forks of trees, well above the ground. A seventeen-year-old boy came home one night covered in blood. More than five hundred and sixty people have formally reported seeing it since 1998 alone.

Four NSW government inquiries have been commissioned. Two concluded its existence was more likely than not. One of those reports was edited before public release, its finding quietly removed, its author instructed not to speak publicly on the subject.

No body has ever been found. No DNA confirmed. No camera trap has ever captured a frame.

In this episode of Strewth, we go deep into the Blue Mountains to follow the evidence and the cover-up behind Australia's most enduring predator mystery.

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Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay

Sources:

• NSW Department of Primary Industries, Large Free-Ranging Felines in New South Wales: A Review, John Parkes (2013)

• Dr Johannes Bauer, ecological assessment commissioned by NSW Agriculture (1999)

• Michael Williams & Rebecca Lang, Australian Big Cats: An Unnatural History of Panthers (2010)

• Kevin Sheridan correspondence, released under Freedom of Information

• Hills Shire Times, March 2003 (Luke Walker attack)

• Hawkesbury Gazette, December 2013 (Peter Russel encounter)

• Lithgow Mercury, March 2018 (Sam Maher encounter)