The stories inject a bit of sparkle and interest, and it’s sort of nice to think there’s something mysterious out there.

Well, (he said, bracing himself) there’s been another one. Almost in the centre of Bendigo and while your Down The Mall reporter can’t claim personally to have seen it, someone VERY close to him did – and the eyewitness would normally be described in journalese as “a usually reliable source”.

It happened on Tuesday, just after noon, in clear daylight on Bright Street near where it comes to a T-intersection with Avery’s Road, just nine minutes’ drive from the CBD. There are numerous pockets of bush in the area.

An animal much larger than a domestic cat but still feline, black to dark brown, darted out of a bit of the California Gully Bushland Reserve, across Bright Street right in front of our eyewitness’ car and disappeared into another part of the bushland reserve on the other side of the road.

“I swear it was a huge cat,” she, sorry, our witness said. “It was enormous. It was long with a thick, cat-like tail. Its shoulder would have been as high as my knee. It moved low and fast like a cat.”

+++

The cat in our latest report matched the photograph of an animal which featured in a Facebook post by the Addy almost precisely three years ago. It was sighted off the Calder Freeway near Malmsbury.

It received 529 “Likes”, 197 “Shares” and a staggering 737 “Comments”, many from people reporting similar sightings in the broader region including Lancefield, Heathcote, Big Hill, Daylesford, Tarnagulla and most places in between.

They included comments such as “Sarah remember I told you at the caravan park I saw one.... Just out of Bendigo... I'm not insane.” And: “I saw a large cat-like thing in Heathcote a few years ago.” 

Dozens and dozens of them. All posted by people using their real names.