AT 8.49am on Monday, February 19, an email landed in my inbox that would send me on a wild goose chase – or, more accurately, a wild panther chase.
The mysterious email was sent by Leanne Margrie to Bogie Tree, an email list used by residents of Strathbogie and nearby areas.
“Big cat sighting. 7.43am heading due west between Lightning Ridge track and Harpers,” it read.
The terse announcement had a sense of urgency, as if the dangerous cat could be anywhere, at any time.
I was riveted.
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Making matters more exciting, some replies to the email suggested other residents had also seen or “experienced” a big cat in Strathbogie.
I did not have Ms Margrie’s phone number, but I hurriedly set about calling the other residents.
I sensed I was on the cusp of a story that would send shockwaves through the Strathbogie Shire and beyond, with my career in journalism sure to skyrocket as a result.
“I think they only go out at night,” the first resident, Marilyn Mangione, told me.
“Because that was when I saw it crossing the road, about 200 metres ahead of me, and it was the long tail that gave me the goosebumps,” she said.
She had seen the panther about two years ago, at dusk, while driving on Ankers Road in Strathbogie in the direction of her farm.
Even more excited now, I called the next big cat believer, Kim Usher.
Mr Usher said he had not seen the panther but had “certainly experienced it”.
“My son’s fiancé most definitely has – she saw the whole thing walking down the back of my place, and it was chewing on some old lamb bones, purring,” he said.
“She got the fright of her life.”
Mr Usher told me about many others who had seen the big cat.
A neighbour of his many years ago, since passed on, had his cattle mysteriously all cross over a creek onto Mr Usher’s property.
When he attempted to push the cattle back onto the correct side of the creek, the cows refused to budge.
And when he persisted, a large cat with a square-shaped head, similar to the leopards he had seen in South Africa, broke out of the undergrowth.
Another lady, whom Mr Usher knew only as Tess, had seen the panther twice walking down the street in Strathbogie, in her own driveway.
These stories were amazing.
But I became aware I was not the first to discover the tales of this elusive panther.
In fact, the panther is so famous in Strathbogie it is featured on a mural on the town’s Telstra exchange building, painted by Tim Bowtell in 2017.
And last year, a cricket team named the Bogie Panthers was formed, before a certain awkward situation saw the team deregistered from the Wangaratta and District Cricket Association, as previously reported by this masthead.
Still, I reasoned the panther’s recent sighting made for an exciting story.
I tracked down the phone number of Ms Margrie, whose email had sparked this whole adventure, and called her.
“I saw the post in Bogie Tree about the big cat sighting,” I told her, holding my breath in anticipation of all the juicy details.
“Oh, no, it was just a cat,” she said.
I pretended not to be disappointed.
“Oh, you don’t think it was panther?” I asked.
“Oh, no, God no,” she said.
“You know, these people get on Bogie Tree and they just whinge and whinge and whinge.
“And we went, ‘you know, we're just gonna stir the pot and just be stupid’.
“It was a cat, it was a feral cat, but no, it wasn't a big cat.”
When I told her I had since heard of other big cat sightings, she said: “Oh, that’s bullshit.”
“There’s no way the panthers are alive,” she said.
“If they came out in the Second World War, if you do the math, they're not gonna be here.”
The Second World War?
I later learnt the meaning of this reference, upon reading about the fabled panther in a history book named “Strathbogie… down the track”, which was written by the Strathbogie Down the Track committee in 1977 and updated in 2006.
According to the book, in the early 1950s, two panthers had been on a truck carrying a travelling circus “in the pitch black of night”, when it crossed the railway tracks on Anderson Street, Euroa, and was struck by a freight train.
The collision killed three of the truck’s human occupants, while the panthers escaped.
“After an extensive search the panthers were not found, they had disappeared under the cover of darkness and perhaps never seen again. Or were they?” the book asked.
Feeling discouraged, but refusing to give up on what had appeared to be a great story, I set off towards the hills of Strathbogie in The Euroa Gazette’s SUV.
At the Strathbogie General Store, owner Andrew Townsend rebutted Ms Margrie’s theory that if the panthers had escaped in the 1950s, they would now be dead.
“A couple out here who were very, very religious people, were on their farm and they saw a mother one, feeding its babies,” Mr Townsend said.
“So, they're here and they’re breeding.
“How or where it operates, why we have never found dead ones, has got me stumped.”
Strathbogie General Store worker Nicole Russell’s ears pricked up.
“Are we talking Bogie panther stories?” she said.
Ms Russell explained that one night, her horses had bolted out of the paddock, breaking through wire fences.
The next morning, she discovered a number of her sheep dead, with their stomachs opened and their entrails eaten.
“It was just like an incision had been made, straight up the middle,” she said.
Similar instances of mysterious guttings had been experienced by Mr Usher and Mr Townsend.
Finally, Ms Russell ushered me to a house about two doors down from the store, to speak to one last person to give me the evidence I craved.
A wild-eyed, hairy-chested, shirtless young man opened the door.
He told me his sister had recently seen the panther crossing the road.
But my efforts to get his sister’s number were fruitless, and in my surprise at his lack of clothing, I even forgot to ask for the man’s name.
As I drove back to Euroa, admiring the beautiful landscape, I could not decide if the panther was real, or whether or not I had wasted my time.
One thing I knew, though, is that I loved this strange little part of the world.
