On the trail of the 'coupan'
Janine Beacham
Wednesday, 15 December 2004

A local property owner believes the 'coupan', the mystery black cat recently spotted by local people at a fishing spot, is alive and well after several appearances on his property near Ellensbrook Road.

The farmer encountered the coupan in February this year, while his property had long grass on it.

On a warm, still evening, he was sitting outside at about 6.40pm when his dogs started barking.

He went to quiet them and saw them approach with their heads and tails down.

He went to the back of his property and heard a "scream like a lion teased by a lion tamer" in the paddock.

The screams continued for about five minutes.

The farmer went back to the house, told his wife "there's something out the back," and they both went out to listen.

"It freaked us out," he said.

The farmer fetched a gun and torch and scanned the paddock with a spotlight.

Everything went quiet, and they wondered if the noise had been horses fighting.

The farmer phoned nearby friends asking if they could hear the noise, but they could not.

Friends came over with a rifle and a spotlight and went out into the paddock, but found nothing.

The same night a local shot a kangaroo outside his gate and dragged it into a gully.

The next morning the carcass had been pulled out and everything above its shoulders was gone.

The next day at about 5.30pm the couple went down the south paddock and heard the noise 100m away.

Back at the farm, one of the staff and her boyfriend heard it for about 15 minutes.

A week or so later they were picking up haybales in the south paddock when they found fresh kangaroo carcasses, picked clean.

The farmer finally spotted the animal a week later at 5.45am, as it ran up a fenceline.

He described it as long and black with a long black tail and square head-slender in the style of a puma.

"It was running full pelt along the fenceline," he said.

"I was totally stunned at its speed, about 50km an hour.

"Its back legs came up past its head, passing two fencepost gaps per stride."

He fetched his gun and went up to look "with some trepidation" for the animal, but had no luck.

"This thing hunted on our property because of the long grass we had," he said.

"Now in summer it's coming back out."

Another local farmer in the Burnside Road area had a quick glimpse of a black animal on his property at this time last year.

He was outside at 6am when he saw all the kangaroos in view moving at once.

His brother, driving up the driveway, had to slow down to dodge them.

As the farmer opened the car door he glimpsed the black animal.

"I saw something, travelling very fast," he said.

"It was too big to be a cat, even a feral cat grown big, and too fast for a dog."

He said he had spoken to many people who had seen such a creature, including on Bramley Road in the early mornings, where they had had a good look at it.

The same farmer was camping at Mount Ridley north of Esperance in September with friends and they heard an "ungodly scream" twice in the night.

The next day while walking on a rock outcrop, they saw a big dead kangaroo on the track.

Its head had been gnawed off and its chest cavity eaten out.

The next morning the carcase was gone.

"It would take a large animal to do that," the farmer said.

Some people are said to have seen a large black cat in Augusta and Busselton.

The ‘coupan' has been a local mystery for about 30 years.

Since the 1970s, graziers in the South West have reported losing a large number of their sheep and lambs.

The farmers had been used to losing a small percentage of their stock to feral pigs, foxes, dingoes and feral dogs.

From about 1977, they noticed the style of killing was different: while feral dogs, foxes and dingoes were messy killers, tearing, shredding and wounding, the other style of killing was cleaner, with the skin peeled back neatly and the ribs stripped clean.

Large kangaroos, possums and calves were found killed in the same manner, and some had completely crushed skulls.

The animal became known as the Cordering Cougar, and it was rumoured that a pair of cougars had escaped from an overturned circus truck in the area in 1960.