The Tantanoola Tiger, 1895: Shot, Stuffed and Still Argued Over

In the early 1890s, sheep were dying on the runs around Tantanoola, in the south-east corner of South Australia, and people blamed a “tiger.” Witnesses described a striped animal. A favorite local story said it was a cub that had escaped from a travelling menagerie. Mounted police and a tracker searched for it, without result.

August 1895

The Mount Gambier Border Watch of 24 August 1895 reported the end of the hunt (paraphrased from the Trove text). A large animal had been shot on the Mount Salt / Mount Schanck run, credited to Mr. T. Donovan, and brought in for examination. The taxidermist James Marks and others pronounced it a common European wolf, about five feet long from nose to tail. Marks later leaned toward a “Syrian” wolf. The paper floated the theory that a wolf might have come ashore from a shipwreck on that coast.

The same report also kept the doubt alive. Local people who knew the native animals were cautious. One long-time believer in the tiger doubted that this canid was the striped animal witnesses had described for years. The article also tells of an earlier encounter at an Aboriginal camp. (The 1895 text uses a dated racist term here, which we don’t repeat.)

A shorter telegraphed version, datelined Mount Gambier 21 August, ran the same day in a second paper (Trove article 91463311). We haven’t confirmed which paper that was.

What’s argued now

In August 2025, for the 130th anniversary, ABC News went back to the story:

• Historian David Waldron (Federation University) says wildlife experts consider the specimen an alpine dingo, a large native canid, not a wolf.
• Author Neville Bonney doubts that the man credited with the shot actually fired it.
• A 1911 sheep-stealing conviction explained at least one later round of “tiger” losses.
• The stuffed animal has been on display at the Tantanoola Tiger Hotel since 1947.

Ledger status

Marked disputed. An animal was shot and preserved, so something real is on display. What it is and how it got there are still argued. The modern dingo identification rests on one expert view reported by ABC, and we know of no published DNA test.

Images: we don’t host any for this file. The 1895 page is out of copyright, but Trove’s rights label for this item hasn’t been checked yet. The hotel specimen photos we’ve seen aren’t licensed for reuse. The hotel is a working pub and private business, so this file gives no pin.

Part of the Antipodes Desk and From the Archive, October 2026.

Sources

• Border Watch (Mount Gambier), 24 Aug 1895, “The Tantanoola Tiger. Shot by Mr. T. Donovan. Declared to be a Wolf.” (paraphrased) — Trove 78844419
• “The Tantanoola Tiger. Shot at Last. Mount Gambier, August 21.” (paper not confirmed), 24 Aug 1895 — Trove 91463311
• ABC News, “Questions remain over Tantanoola tiger 130 years after it was shot dead,” 21 Aug 2025 — abc.net.au