These days the Illawarra's mystery animal is the black panther, but in the late 1800s, it was a gorilla.
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At least in Dapto, anyway. Because that was where someone insisted they saw one.
Though he was a hotel owner, so maybe he'd indulged in a few of his own drinks before the claimed sighting.
The gorilla witness in question was George Osborne, owner of the Illawarra Hotel at Dapto.
In April 1871, he was out collecting people's census documents in the Avondale ranges and decided to return home as the sun was going down.
On the way back his horse was startled by an animal climbing down a tree before falling two metres to the ground.
"My feelings at that moment were anything but happy," Osborne remembered.
"Although my horse was restless I endeavoured to get a good glimpse of the animal by following it as it retreated until it disappeared into a gully."
He got a good enough look to be able to say it was about 1.5-metres tall, with long arms and feet that were 45 centimetres long "and shaped like an iguana's"
Oh yeah, and it was covered with black hair - except for the feet and face.
"It walked quadruped fashion," he told the Mercury, "but at every few paces, it would turn and look at me following it, supporting the body with the two legs and one arm, while the other arm was placed across the hip."
Osbourne added that two children had seen the creature some years earlier, but they felt it was only the size of a 13-year-old boy.
While the Mercury's urge to refer to the animal as "his gorillaship" speaks to some scepticism, there were locals who believed Osborne was telling the truth.
They even went looking for it.
"On Wednesday last a party of 20 or 30 gentlemen assembled in the vicinity indicated with dogs, ropes and firearms," the Mercury reported.
"But after considerable wanderings had been made by some of the party, and much patient waiting on the part of others, evening closed on the expedition without their having obtained either scent or sight of the gorilla."
Despite its apparent doubts, the paper felt it vital for the locals to find the gorilla because there was talk of a team from Sydney coming down for a look.
Far better for Illawarra people to get the glory of capturing the gorilla than some upstarts from the big smoke.
As is the way with these things, other people came out of the woodwork to say they too had seen a gorilla in their midst.
A resident on "Bulli Mountain" said he had seen a larger version of the gorilla in the bush several times.
An anonymous individual known as "an Old Sailor" recounted a quite detailed story of the time he'd seen the gorilla - and in its native habitat of Dapto.
The sailor had been on a boat that pulled in at Wollongong, where he and others hopped off to check out the town. They had a few drinks and headed into the bush behind Dapto, where they found a guy who was in possession of what we can assume was moonshine - and he was willing to share it.
So the sailor got drunk and then lost in the bush. While trying to find his way back to the ship, he heard something charge through the bush and up a tree.
"Looking up I saw the most extraordinary animal in the world," he said. "About five feet high, long arms, legs something like mine but not so handsome, feet about 18 inches long, long toes covered with long hair and as much like a gigantic monkey as possible."
But then the sailor gets to the point where you know this is a total wind-up - for the beast actually talks to him.
"I am a gorilla," the gorilla said, "and owner of the forest upon which you are now trespassing."
Then the two of them have a nice old conversation before the sailor shares his booze with the gorilla.
But no-one else really saw Osborne's gorilla - though the man himself must have been convinced it was real. Osborne was a council roads inspector for a time, and an alderman noted that he avoided checking the streets in the Dapto and Avondale for some time.
As for the rest of the region, the Dapto gorilla became a figure of fun, something to joke about. And perhaps something that dogged Osborne for the rest of his life.