Rossville's 'white panther'

Man and couple claim to see mysterious white panther at Rossville
by Ross Irby, 6.6.07
Cairns Post
“I WASN’T drinking and definitely no funny smokes. I think it was this mystery ancient animal people talk about that was here.”
Rossville resident Jim Stone is not laughing off the mysterious creature he saw running through his property near the Bloomfield Valley on a Sunday afternoon last month.
And his son’s partner, JaJa Elliot, also was stunned when she saw it. His son, James, reported seeing something very much like the creature six months before.
Mr Stone said last Friday what he saw was like a white panther: “I swear blind it’s shape was like a panther, a long, lean animal.”
He and JaJa were watching TV when the white animal ran past the front door then around the house and back into dense rainforest.
It was the same scenario witnessed by his son last year of a swiftly moving creature near the family home.
For a brief moment, they mistook it for JaJa’s dog, only to realise Spanner was inside. Also strange was the way the pet did not react to the animal. “It looked like a white panther. We have been trying to figure out what it is,” he said.
“I know the feral dogs and dingoes in the area and it definitely wasn’t a dog. I even thought (briefly) it may have been a calf because of the size of it but there is none around here.”
Perplexed by the mysterious beast Mr Stone three days before found unusual imprints in the wet earth near his home, of an animal making three-toed prints. The resident of 25 years said it reminded him of stories about people seeing what might have been a black panther on Black Mountain and north of Cooktown.
His mystery follows other mysterious sightings of a creature near Myola that has left people wondering if it was a feral pig, dog or the mysterious North Queensland tiger.

CFZ credit: Mike Williams