Personal Choice Volume 2 No.24

The Tantanoola Tiger can be found at the Tiger Hotel, Tantanoola in the Limestone Coast of South Australia.

In the early 1880's, a small circus was making its way between Millicent & Mt Gambier and camped for the night, in the morning they discovered the Bengal Tiger had escaped. After

searching for the tiger, they reported the loss to the police.

Whilst many hours were spent searching over the next few weeks by police and volunteers, no sightings were made.

In the early 1890's, sheep began disappearing from the Tantanoola area, blame being laid at the feet of the tiger, although no sightings of it were ever made. In 1893, reports surfaced of an unusual animal in the Tantanoola area. Some described it as the missing tiger, some claimed it was just a large dog.

Tales were told, some true, many exaggerated. Supposedly, Tantanoola was a town besieged by the lurking tiger. In August of 1895, Mr. Tom Donovan shot the 'Tantanoola Tiger' on Mt Salt Station, some 20kms south of Tantanoola.

The Tantanoola Tiger

There in the bracken was the ominous spoor mark,

Huge, splayed, deadly, and quiet as breath,

And all around lay bloodied and dying,

Staring dumbly into their several eternities,

The rams that Mr Morphett loved as sons.

Not only Tantanoola, but at Mount Schanck

The claw welts patterned the saplings

With mysteries terrible as Egypt's demons,

More evil than the blueness of the Lakes,

And less than a mile from the homestead, too.

Sheep died more rapidly than the years

Which the tiger ruled in tooth and talk,

And it padded from Beachport to the Border,

While blood streamed down the minds of the folk

Of Mount Gambier, Tantanoola, of Casterton.

Oh this tiger was seen all right, grinning,

Yellow and gleaming with satin stripes:

Its body arched and undulated through the tea-tree;

In this land of dead volcanoes it was a flame,

It was a brightness, it was the glory of death,

It was fine, this tiger, a sweet shudder

In the heath and everlastings of the Border,

A roc bird up the ghostly ring-barked gums

Of Mingbool Swamp, a roaring fate

Descending on the mindless backs of grazing things.

Childhoods burned with its burning eyes,

Tantanoola was a magic playground word,

It rushed through young dreams like a river

And it had lovers in Mr Morphett and Mr Marks

For the ten long hunting unbelieving years.

Troopers and blacks made safari, Africa-fashion,

Pastoral Quixotes swayed on their ambling mounts,

Lost in invisible trails. The red-faced

Young Lindsay Gordons of the Mount

Tormented their heartbeats in the rustling nights

While the tiger grew bigger and clear as an axe.

'A circus once abandoned a tiger cub.'

This was the creed of the hunters and poets.

'A dingo that's got itself too far south'

The grey old cynics thundered in their beers,

And blows were swapped and friendships broken,

Beauty burst on a loveless and dreary people,

And their moneyed minds broke into singing

A myth; these soured and tasteless settlers

Were Greeks and Trojans, billabong troubadours,

Plucking their themes at the picnic races

Around the kegs in the flapping canvas booths.

On the waist-coats shark's teeth swung in time,

And old eyes, sharply seamed and squinting,

Opened mysteriously in misty musical surprise,

Until the day Jack Heffernan made camp

By a mob of sheep on the far slope of Mount Schanck

And woke to find the tiger on its haunches,

Bigger than a mountain, love, or imagination,

Grinning lazily down on a dying ewe,

And he drew a bead and shot it through the head.

Look down, oh mourners of history, poets,

Look down on the black and breeding volcanic soil,

Lean on your fork in this potato country,

Regard the yellowed fangs and quivering claws

Of a mangy and dying Siberian wolf.

It came as a fable or a natural image

To pace the bars of these sunless minds,

A small and unimpressive common wolf

In desperately poor and cold condition.

It howled to the wattle when it swam ashore

From the wreck of the foundered Helena,

Smelt death and black snakes and tight lips

On every fence-post and slip-rail.

It was three foot six from head to tail.

Centuries will die like swatted blowflies

Before word or wolf will work a tremor

Of tenderness in the crusty knuckles

Around the glasses in the Tantanoola pub

Where its red bead eyes now stare towards the sun.

Max Harris

Max Harris was without qualification the most important supporter of my early poetry and we shared a correspondence where he encouraged and praised my work. He also gave me advice and he was a stern and uncompromising critic. My writing seemed after each note or letter from him to leap into new heights and dimensions. I owe him and later his daughter Samela a huge debt for their belief, confidence, regard and published praise for my work.

Max Harris (1921 - 1995) journalist, poet and bookseller - helped shift Australian tastes in literature and art towards modernism. In 1940, he created a literary journal Angry Penguins that published progressive writers such as Dylan Thomas and later the works of artists such as Albert Tucker, Sidney Nolan, Joy Hester and Arthur Boyd. Harris had fierce critics amongst the establishment arts scene, two of whom conspired to set Harris up in a famous literary hoax. Harris later founded and co-edited the Australian Book Review and founded Sun Books. As a columnist in The Australian and Adelaide newspapers, he campaigned against censorship and was an early supporter of the Australian Republican movement.