The extinction of the Tasmanian tiger or thylacine has been widely explored by science and in popular culture – when and why it took place or whether it in fact still survives in some of Tasmania’s furthest outposts.
Much less has been written about its cultural relevance today, but that is exactly what is highlighted by rock paintings discovered in a remote northern corner of Northern Territory – an area known as Arnhem Land.
A team led by Professor Paul Taçon of Brisbane-based Griffith University has been studying 14 depictions of thylacines discovered in western Arnhem Land since 2018 and has concluded that two of these artworks are less than 1,000 years old.
This is significant because the consensus is the thylacine went extinct on mainland Australia 3,000 years ago owing to a variety of factors including competition with introduced dingoes and hunting by humans, and so these paintings suggest this may not have been the case in this extreme location.
“Arnhem Land is the only place where stories and a name for the thylacine – djankerrk – survive,” says Taçon. “The artists who made the more recent paintings may have seen actual living thylacines.” It is also possible they were inspired by other paintings, he adds.
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Taçon’s previous research has shown how thylacines are associated with what indigenous people call the Rainbow Serpent and also very strongly with water.
In his new research paper, he notes that “Stories linking thylacines with rain, Rainbow Serpents, bodies of water and swimming suggest some knowledge of thylacine behaviour survives.”
The swimming ability of thylacines, Taçon continues, was noted in the 1850s by the colonial administrator Joseph Milligan, who said “The aborigines report that this animal is a most powerful swimmer” and “the nose, eyes and upper portion of the head are the only parts usually seen above water.”
Other parts of the continent where numerous rock paintings of thylacines have been found include the Pilbara, a large and sparsely populated area of northern Western Australia and Kimberley, the northernmost part of the same state. Elsewhere they are much rarer, with a charcoal drawing in Wollemi National Park one of the few examples. In total, there are about 150.
Joey Nganjmirra, a Djalama man from Western Arnhem Land and co-author of the paper, says his ancestors used to tell stories about going hunting with thylacines.
“The thylacine lives on in western Arnhem Land not as a ghost from the past but as a meaningful creature that still has present-day significance,” Taçon says.
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