Mt. Abergowrie had been ravaged by the Ash Wednesday bushfires of January and February 1983, losing almost all of its original foliage.   Now, a dozen years later, the black wolf found himself wandering through an eerie landscape where new green foliage stood side-by-side with twisted, blackened gargoyle shapes, like weird tree monsters from some Lovecraftean fantasy.

He had climbed more than two-thirds of the way up the side of the mountain, and had started to fear that he would follow them all the way to the top, when the prints suddenly veered to the left and started around the side of the mount.   After a few hundred metres, the bushes began to thin out until the black wolf suddenly looked out over a small clearing.

From the state of the clearing, he could tell that this was where the dingo pack made its base.   The flattened grass showed clear outlines where large bodies had recently lain and was strewn with the gnawed and yellowing remains of a plethora of sheep and cattle bones — as well as many types he didn’t recognise.

At the other side of the clearing was the opening to a cave.   Approaching as near as he dared, the black wolf could clearly see the figure of a Tasmanian tiger in the cave.   ‘Why isn’t it on the hunt?’ he wondered.   ‘Perhaps it’s ill or injured?’   But there had been no attacks reported on sheep stations lately, so with no farmers to shoot at it, the wolf wondered how the tiger could have been injured.

He crept round the side of the foliage ringing the clearing to get a better view and realised, ‘It’s not the same tiger!   This one is much smaller!   Perhaps it’s not fully grown yet?’

He watched for a while, wondering about this second tiger before noticing movement from the brownish, tiger-striped dog.   At first he thought the tiger was getting up to leave and Ernie prepared to back further into the forest.   Then he realised it was only the stomach of the tiger that was moving.   He watched entranced as the dog’s belly undulated like waves on a stormy sea.   ‘Some form of massive growth inside it?’ he thought, wondering if the dog was too sick to go out hunting with the pack.   Then seeing the flap of the marsupial pouch on the tiger’s belly, he realised, ‘It’s a female tiger!’