They Saw a Thylacine …

There is an article in TROVE labelled Beauty and the Beast ( http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/54241041 ).

The beauty in the article is Alison Reid, photographed as she sits coolly with a leopard called Mike resting his upper body on her lap. A young woman, fearless as the lioness she foster-mothered, she would walk with her best friend, leopard Mike on the Hobart domain.

Alison felt confident enough to place her hand in Mike’s mouth and raised him when, born as a twin, his mother devoured his sibling! Alison is a little known Tasmanian, but hopefully the new play ‘They Saw a Thylacine’ may give this amazing woman’s story the prominence it deserves.

Her life is definitely the material for a Hollywood movie.

Alison’s father was the curator of Beaumaris Zoo, the home of the last Tasmanian tiger and this is the story of the play, created by Tasmania’s own, the delightful Sarah Hamilton with Justine Campbell.

When we chat Sarah tells me she gets back to Tasmania 3 times a year. Sarah has lived in Hobart, Bicheno, Devonport and Launceston.

Some of her favourite things to do are to go to Salamanca Market, Mt Wellington, the coast of Bicheno and its Diamond Island beach.

Sarah is bringing ‘They Saw a Thylacine’ to Tasmania, explaining to me her long-time obsession with the Tasmanian tiger. The catalyst/trigger for writing this play about the Tasmanian tiger was a story Sarah’s grandfather told her. As a little boy playing on the sand near the family beach house he was privy to what he called ‘a monster in the sand’, which on later inspection was identified as a drowned thylacine. Sarah says he was ‘scarily intrigued’ by this unnatural sight.

As a primary school student Sarah completed projects on thylacines and when she was in grade 6 even took her mum bushwalking on Frenchman’s Cap examining what she believed was tiger ‘waste’ it was later explained by an expert on the subject to have originated from a Tassie devil rather than a tiger!

Fast forward some time and Sarah is still searching for that elusive tiger and in that search she has discovered the dual disservice done to the tiger and to Alison Reid.

When Alison Reid’s father was injured in the eye by a bird while carrying out work at the zoo and later passed away, Alison was knowledgeable in all facets of the maintenance of the zoo and was ready to continue her father’s work.

But in those unenlightened times (and in spite of Alison’s fine qualifications and experience) she was a woman … and was prevented from taking over as curator of the zoo. With no one else capable to do the job, the neglected zoo and tiger faded away.

An interesting irony Sarah tells me, is that the tiger was compared to the human female and seen as somewhat second-rate among the animal kingdom because of its pouch. To this observation Sarah says now we consider the pouch ‘an awesome adaptation’.

Perhaps a final irony is that the original founder of the zoo when it was situated at Battery Point was an equally talented woman, Mary Roberts.

Sarah says the play illustrates how a seemingly small decision can in fact change the course of history.

You can see ‘They saw a Thylacine’ at the Theatre Royal:

Thu 31 Mar 2016 7:30pm

Fri 01 Apr 2016 7:30pm
Paula Xiberras