The short story ‘THE LAST TASMANIAN TIGER’ by Lance Morcan is available now as an audiobook via Amazon’s Audible initiative. (Listening time 33 mins). To listen to a sample, click on “Virtual voice sample” at: https://www.amazon.com/Audible-The-Last-Tasmanian-Tiger/dp/B0FDL1F54N/
This work of pure fiction, set in Tasmania, Australia, was inspired by the true-life figure of Dingo Truganini, the Aboriginal tracker who helped capture the last known Thylacine cynocephalus – an animal better known as the Tasmanian tiger courtesy of its stripes and the fact that it was a carnivorous marsupial. That was in 1933. They named him Benjamin, and he resided at the Hobart Zoo until his death in 1936.
Benjamin the Tasmanian tiger can be viewed in this remarkable video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o79vefZC-aQ
Most Australians, incidentally, believe the Tasmanian tiger is extinct. Most but not all. Sightings have been, and still are, frequently reported, but none have been definitively confirmed as genuine.
In real life, the aforementioned Dingo was descended from a woman simply known as Truganini who is considered the last full-blooded Aboriginal Tasmanian and whose name he inherited. That’s where the history ends and the fiction begins.
In ‘THE LAST TASMANIAN TIGER’ my protagonist is one Charlie Truganini, also (fictitiously) descended from his namesake and the great-grandson of Dingo. Charlie has devoted his life to searching for the Tassie tiger, as he refers to it, or the thylacine, as scientific types insist on calling it, to determine one way or the other whether it still exists. He has always suspected it does exist despite having never sighted it nor even stumbled across its spoor in all his travels.
When Charlie sees a Tasmanian tiger with his own eyes, he realises he doesn’t want his tiger meeting the same fate as the last one. And so he makes a decision. A decision that will have life-and-death consequences.
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For those who prefer the printed word, ‘THE LAST TASMANIAN TIGER’ is one of five tales in my book ‘5 SHORT STORY GEMS’ which is available as a paperback via Harvard Book Store, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones UK & Europe bookstores, Amazon and via public libraries.
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Morcan Books & Films 