In the early 1990s, two mates were driving from Taranna on the Tasman Peninsula to Hobart. They were roughly halfway, when one of them yelled urgently to the driver, 'Stop, stop! Tasmanian tiger!' They turned the car around and went back to investigate, but there was no sign. A few kilometres further along the road they pulled into a service station. The driver, anxious not to ask a leading question, inquired of the guy behind the counter whether anyone had spotted Tasmanian Devils recently in the area. 'I don't know about that,' the man replied, 'but someone saw a Tasmanian Tiger a couple of days ago!'

The chap who related this story to me was the driver that night. These days he works in conservation and is measured when imparting knowledge in his field. He's had more birthdays than he'd probably care to count, and did not strike me as a man prone to exaggeration. He quietly and calmly told me he thinks there are still thylacines alive in Tasmania. He still hasn't seen one, but he believes.

It's not difficult to find stories such as his; ever since 1936, in fact, when the alleged last remaining tiger died in Hobart zoo, and right up to the present. Col Bailey's Lure of the Thylacine: True Stories and Legendary Tales of the Tasmanian Tiger collects together many variations on the theme across the island.

On a visit to Tasmania in 2012, I bought another book, Thylacine: the Tragic Tale of the Tasmanian Tiger, by David Owen. If you don't know much about Tassie's tiger, this is a good start. I was instantly captivated by the subject matter. Or maybe I should say re-captivated. My first Australian friend when I moved to Brisbane in 2010 was a Melbourne lass, but she had worked for the Tasmanian government for two or three years and travelled the island in that capacity. As well as initiating me about Drop Bears, she described vast areas of wilderness in Tasmania's west that are inaccessible, empty and largely unexplored. I found it hard to believe at the time, but last week I flew over the region and saw for myself. She believed there could be small remnant populations of thylacines in isolated pockets of unwelcoming country.

There are tiger-sighting 'hotspots' all over Tasmania, in fact: in the northwest, the northeast, the Tasman Peninsula, the Great Western Tiers, the Central Highland lakes district, as well as the southwestern wilderness. (Further afield, stories come from remote parts of the Adelaide Hills, the Nullarbor, southwest WA, southeast New South Wales, and across Victoria, where some believe the thylacine was smuggled in as the animal's extinction loomed in Tasmania.)

Relatively few bushwalkers – 200 a year according to the Parks & Wildlife Service – travel the 70-kilometre Port Davey Track from Scotts Peak Dam at the southern end of Lake Pedder, to Melaleuca*, south of Bathurst Harbour, but the region is not without tiger sightings. Col Bailey reports that in 1958, walkers coming up from Bathurst Harbour claimed to have seen tiger tracks at several locations in the Mt Heyes (Arthur Range) and Mt Bowes/Weld River** sections.