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MYSTERY LIONS OF THE BLUE MOUNTAINS Continued from page 27 houses bordering the Katoomba water road in front of them. The dark brown Catchment scrub were terrorised by mys- furred animal disappeared into the dense !€tious huge, hairy lion-like animals. scrub. They killed poultry, mauled cattle, and Ron's brother, Phillip, in 1982, had a ‘ft behind large tracks in the soil, similar experience when he saw the same _ At the time I was deluged with sight- type of creature while bike riding out on igs reports of the monster cats, but after Tablelands Road, Wentworth Falls. a few weeks they faded away as mysteri- According to old Aboriginal traditions °USly as they had happened. of the former Burragorang and Megalong The “Blue Mountains Lion” mystery Valley tribes, the eerie "Devils Hole", the Persists. Only in January this year (1992) great cleft in the cliffs out on Katoomba's Several campers on the Wild Dog Cliff Drive, which drops down into the Mountains south-west of Narrow Neck Megalong Valley below Narrow Neck Peninsula claimed they saw a large, Peninsula, was once the lair of the 'rock- brownish-haired, lion-like cat, in the act dogs', or Warrigals, - huge shaggy-haired of sunning itself on a cliff edge. When it animals that used to attack Aboriginals. saw the campers it rose up and bounded Needless to say, Aborigines avoided the _ off in big strides up and over boulders and "Hole" as much as possible. They said it down into a gully to disappear, leaving was up this cleft that the 'rock dogs' were the group a little uneasy after this experi- able to move from out of the valley up ence. into the Katoomba scrub. Perhaps they _In another incident, in February this still do. year, a man and woman were hiking Test prior to climbing up the ‘Hole’ to the Cliff Drive. The time was about 4pm and as they sat on a trackside rock, they were startled by a loud roaring noise coming from a nearby gully. “Whatever it was, it sounded frighten- ing, and we got out of that place and up the Devils Hole as quick as we could”, said the man to me later. ‘ The vast rugged impenetrable valleys of the Blue Mountains remain much as they have for untold thousands of years. There are still regions out there where modern man has yet to penetrate. Who is to say what creatures could sur- vive unseen out there? Until one of these animals can be cap- tured, or the remains of one found, the identity of the "Blue Mountains Lion" remains unestablished. And so these hairy, lion-like animals live on - eluding Man - and the vast wilds of the Blue Mountains continue to keep their secret. In another incident, in February this year, a man and woman were hiking below Devils Hole, when they stopped to JUNE-JULY 1992 64°NEXUS Continued from page 27 Several years ago, outlying farms and ne TT ee ee eed