Mike Williams (at left) and Tony Healy at Tassie Tiger Lodge. Credit:James Brickwood So what's the plan? "We'll just set game cameras in accessible spots and drive around with our dash cams [dashboard mounted cameras]," says Williams. Minutes later, struggling to erect his pup tent, he moans, "God, I hate f…ing camping!" Given that we missed a turn-off and were lost for an hour just getting here, Williams's cautious approach seems entirely appropriate. Based in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, the property maintenance contractor has been bringing groups to Tasmania for more than a decade hoping to prove that surviving thylacines still roam the island state, where the last known specimen died in a Hobart zoo in 1936. Like others in his party, Williams is a member of the British-based Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ), an eclectic band of armchair adventurers who enliven their travels by searching for clues to the existence of "mystery" creatures such as yetis, giant anacondas, and "missing-link" apes. And while thylacines obviously existed, and weren't officially declared extinct until 1988, numerous claimed sightings since then (but never a verifiable photograph or any physical evidence) have given the lost marsupials – dog-like

and familiar, yet also hauntingly strange – the sort of mystery status CFZ members can't resist.

Williams sets up a camera at camp near The Weld Valley. Credit:James Brickwood Year after year, Williams, 55, and his friends have returned here with no real plan beyond talking to locals who've claimed sightings, setting up cameras, and casting about for hair or droppings in the hope of "proving science wrong" and becoming famous. Financial

reward, they insist, isn't part of their motivation. "I just love the intrigue of things like this," Williams says. "And it's much more fun researching a mystery when you're on the ground and wandering around half-arsed … I never lie about it; I tell people, 'I don't know what I'm doing! I need people to tell me stuff!' And then someone will go, 'You should speak to Bert'. And Bert will say something, and that leads you to a chain of [thylacine] witnesses. Some of them might be mistaken, some might be hoaxers, but I believe some are telling the truth. And if that's correct, then these creatures are still out there." Danish zoologist Lars Thomas inspects snared animal hair at camp near The Weld Valley. Credit:James Brickwood Williams and his group arrived in Devonport

by ferry a few days before photographer James Brickwood and I flew into Hobart, where the only available campervan was a much-travelled Wicked bearing lurid images of the late Amy Winehouse, and her immortal words, "They tried to make me go to rehab … no, no, no!"

We met up with Williams and his Danish zoologist friend, Lars Thomas, at a ranger station near our camp site. Before dark, the intrepid hunters collect a few hair samples from undergrowth beside the track and set up a motion-activated camera. Then we all slobber over various types of dehydrated gruel before turning in – Williams, cursing, in his already collapsing tent; the hefty zoologist/author folded into the back of a 4WD, and us in the dusty sleeping nooks of "Amy", the much-abused camper. Williams spotlights for thylacines near Tassie Tiger Lodge. Credit:James Brickwood It emerges that this show of roughing it was largely for our benefit, and that the rest of Williams's party is comfortably ensconced in a rented house half a day's drive away. Before we came to Tasmania, Williams sought an undertaking that we wouldn't identify any of the areas he might take us to. I agreed, assuming he was protecting tiger-sighting "hot spots", as competing researchers like to call them. But the main reason, he confesses, is that his group is kicking back in something called "Tassie Tiger Lodge", and he feared this would lead to merriment at his expense when my story appeared. "Noooo," I tell him. "No one would think that

was funny." Farmer Richard Compton outside his cottage in the remote Fingal Valley. Credit:James Brickwood

Williams: "Because a couple of years ago we camped in a f…ing swamp. It was hideous! And completely unnecessary, in terms of the sort of research we do." So the new plan is to spend tonight at Tassie Tiger Lodge, meet the rest of the party and do some spotlighting for wildlife. The lodge's website confirms that tiger hunting has become a tourist attraction in itself: "Go on an adventure in search of the elusive thylacine … see if you can be lucky enough to spot one in the bush." (A local thylacine researcher reckons there are "at least 20" competing tiger hunters roaming the state with high-tech equipment on any given day.) One of the last thylacines kept at Hobart’s Beaumaris Zoo in the 1930s. Others do their investigating online, exchanging what Williams calls "bite-sized morsels of shit" that have little to do with reality. Predictably enough, mainstream science is sceptical about all lay thylacine researchers and invariably rejects their pleas for help in identifying hair or waste samples. Refused permission to inspect an "unidentified" animal scat held at one Tasmanian museum, Williams responded hotly, "It's only a bloody turd!" Lars Thomas, who first met Williams at a CFZ "Weird Weekends" conference in the UK, is the exception to the rule involving unhelpful scientists. "I like to call myself the Sherlock Holmes, or consulting detective, of cryptozoology [the study of imaginary or fabled creatures]," he explains. "I make myself available to cryptozoologists to help identify stuff like hair samples and tell them if it's worth further attention."

Fascinated from childhood by notions of "finding new things", the Copenhagen-based zoologist has written dozens of books on natural history and supernatural/mystery themes, and seems to enjoy the distaste his name evokes among scientific peers: "To them, I'm the village idiot, no doubt about that … I've always been irritated by the smugness of mainstream science, and the idea that it is somehow complete and can't evolve … I much prefer the mindset of the Victorian explorers, who said, 'There's lots of exciting things out there. Let's go and find them!' " Thomas says the pattern and quality of thylacine sightings over decades suggests there "must be some kind of real, live creature" behind the reports. "But no amount of eyewitness accounts will ever be enough proof. There would have to be some sort of reasonably fresh physical remains to convince the scientific community, including me, that they still exist." The thylacine went extinct on the Australian mainland about 2000 years ago. But in Tasmania a small population survived to become, after white settlement, the most despised creature on the island. Falsely believed to be serial sheep killers (when the real culprits were wild dogs), the striped "wolves" or "hyenas" were made the subject of various bounties and systematically exterminated. One agricultural group offering rewards for their pelts was the terrifyingly named Buckland and Spring Bay Tiger and Eagle Extermination Society, but the real slaughter began in 1888 when the Tasmanian government introduced a bounty of £1 for adult thylacines and 10 shillings for young. Over the next 20 years, more than 2000 bounties were paid. The last thylacine known to be killed in the wild was shot on a farm in 1930. In 1988 they were declared functionally extinct, meaning if any still existed their numbers were so low they had no real role in the ecosystem and were unlikely to reproduce. "It's so typical for mankind to cruelly and ignorantly exterminate such an animal, then go searching for it as though it was some kind of holy grail," says Thomas. "Some scientists seem almost ashamed of what's been done, but for some reason they go into a sort of denial, closing ranks and insisting there's no point looking for the exterminated animal because what's done is done and we should all move on."

For those convinced the tiger lives, giving up the search is unthinkable. According to Robert Paddle, author of The Last Tasmanian Tiger, there've been almost 4000 sightings reported since 1937, including some on the Australian mainland. In 2005, after a German tourist snapped pictures seemingly showing a thylacine in the bush in Tassie's central highlands, tiger fever soared. The Bulletin magazine (itself now extinct) and a Tasmanian businessman offered a combined $3 million for proof of the creature's existence, and plans – still fiercely debated – were hatched to clone one using a six-month old thylacine pup preserved in alcohol since 1866. Mike Williams's party includes his friend Tony Healy, a veteran researcher of poltergeists and mystery animals and co-author of several books with fellow investigator Paul Cropper. "The Healy Monster", as Williams calls the retired surveyor from Canberra, has already been here for a month, setting cameras and interviewing people who've claimed thylacine sightings. As we head north, Healy, 69, phones Williams to report that he's lined up a farmer for us to meet who tells of witnessing tigers on three separate occasions spanning 40 years. Williams says Healy likes to work as the party's forward scout: "But by the time we get here he's always burnt out. Like a war veteran!" We meet up with the weary Healy in a town on Highway 1, where he's been catching up on sleep in a cheap motel. Then it's time for more eating. (Between them, Williams and Thomas consume as much as several mystery animals: for breakfast, following the deprivations of the previous night, the big Dane ripped through two toasties and a chocolate cake, while Williams wolfed down three bacon-and-egg pies.) Before our convoy rolls on, Healy invites me to ride in his campervan, where he keeps maps and charts of thylacine sightings over recent decades. Most are in the state's north-west and north-east, with other concentrations along the beaches of the west coast and the wilderness of the south-west, which includes the Weld River Valley. "The problem with the south-west is that it's so wild you can't get in there," says Healy. "Honestly, it's scary. If you slipped and broke an ankle, you'd be finished. You'd die and the voracious [Tasmanian] devils would eat you, and no one would find a trace."

Farmer Richard Compton is outside his rustic cottage on a hillside in the remote Fingal Valley, in the state's north-east, when we arrive. Tall and ramrod straight at 78, the ex-cop seems a bit annoyed by our Amy van – "It's a wonder the police haven't booked you!" – but soon warms to the theme of his tiger sightings. Like many of his peers, Compton's grandfather worked as a thylacine bounty hunter, but Compton was 18 before spotting what he believes was his first tiger in 1955. "Three of us were on a 'roo-hunting trip in an old ute when we came around a corner at night, near Gladstone [in the north-east], and saw one standing at the edge of the ti tree. We put our lamp on it and it just stood there watching the light for quite a while … My mate said, 'I'll shoot it.' But I said, 'Bullshit! You shoot that, you mongrel, and I'll shoot you.' " Compton says his next sighting was at Coles Bay, inside the Freycinet Peninsula on the east coast in 1963. "I was working on a fishing boat, the Lillian, and we'd anchored just off the beach to shelter. I was down below making coffee when my mate sang out, 'Come and have a look at this!' And there was a tiger walking along the beach. My mate threw a couta [barracuda] head to it, and it picked it up and just walked off into a gully at a place we used to call Mrs Murphy's Arsehole, after an old sheila who used to live down there." Almost 30 years later, in 1991, Compton was driving across the top of the state towards Launceston one morning "… and suddenly here's another one standing smack bang in the middle of the road. I jumped out with my camera and took a whole roll of film – 28 photos – then dropped it into a photo place in Launceston. I asked the bloke there to tell no one what was on the film, but when I went to collect it he told me I'd left the lens cover on and had nothing! That's no bullshit," he adds, glancing at his wife, Anita, who nods solemnly, "and I've kicked myself ever since." Williams's partner Rebecca Lang isn't happy when we finally reach Tassie Tiger Lodge because Williams and Thomas have just scoffed two roast chickens in the car. "I told you I was making dinner, why couldn't you have waited?" says the former journalist, who now, among other pursuits, writes horror stories. "Because we were starving!" cries the expedition leader. The couple takes us on a quick spotlighting trip near the lodge, where the roadsides are literally jumping with the sort of native wildlife – wallabies, possums, quolls – believers say is sustaining the remnant thylacine population. "I would just be so pleased if we could prove that this animal is defying our best efforts to drive it to extinction," says Lang, who does PR with a straighter face than Williams. "That would be fantastic!"

Later, when the comfort-loving cryptozoologists are sipping whiskey around a table at the lodge, and retired English astrophysicist Chris Clark has spoken of the fabled Mongolian death worm – "According to the stories it's intensely poisonous, quite ridiculously poisonous beyond anything possible" – Lars Thomas explains why he finds the twilight zone between science and the imagination so compelling. "Because it's fun! It's exciting! It's like playing Sherlock Holmes, where you have to decide who killed Colonel Branston based on two footprints and the fact that the dog didn't bark." The go-to expert among thylacine hunters of all descriptions, as well as documentary makers, journalists and even scientists, is Col Bailey, a 78-year-old retired landscape gardener who's been pursuing the creatures for most of his life. He says he found one deep in the Weld River Valley in 1995, but kept his sighting secret – even from his wife – for 17 years, first describing it in his acclaimed book, Shadow of the Thylacine, published in 2013. Bailey turns up on time for our appointment at a cafe in New Norfolk, the town near Hobart where he lives. I already

know, from reading his book, that he gained most of his internationally recognised knowledge of thylacines through befriending and interviewing a now-

vanished generation of old bushmen and tiger trappers. And by venturing alone, time and again, into the last of Tasmania's diminishing wilderness in search of the exotic "survivor" he's come to love. But details are sketchy about the so-called "last thylacine", known as Benjamin, and how it came to die at Hobart's Beaumaris Zoo on September 7, 1936. Bailey, who interviewed the trapper who caught Benjamin and sold him to the zoo, fills in the blanks. At the time, he says, there was a dispute within Hobart City Council over whether the zoo should be closed. At the same time, the zoo keeper fell ill and couldn't attend to the animals. "His daughter, Alison Reid, told me they wouldn't let her tend the animals because women weren't supposed to do such work," says Bailey. "So Benjamin, who'd been locked out of its shelter [over summer], had no where to go when the weather turned icy. It had no food, no water, no nothing, and it just died. The other animals were all shot when the zoo closed down."

The thylacine exhibit at the Hobart Museum and Art Gallery has film from the 1930s of the doomed animals prowling their ugly enclosure at the doomed zoo. Over and over, in a continuous loop, the footage shows the bewildered captives with their "dark, expressionless eyes" pacing, turning, pacing, turning, seemingly as desperate to escape our world as we have since become to rediscover theirs.