Is that mysterious black panther visiting Bulli at night?

A few weeks ago Bulli resident Phillip Lamond and his grandson Oliver spotted large paw prints close to the tennis courts near the showground.

"My grandson found them when he was walking our dog," Mr Lamond said.

"He came back and said 'I've seen these strange footprints'. So I went down; it had been raining the night before so they were very, very clear in the mud."

Mr Lamond didn't give it much thought at the time - and certainly didn't take any photos. But then, weeks later, Oliver was out walking the dog a day after it had rained, and the paw prints were back.

"This time I'd gone down and taken a few photographs," he said.

"Looking at it, it can't be anything else [other than a big cat]. I can't think of anything else that it could be, it's not a dog. It's certainly not a deer, they've got a cloven hoof. You can distinctly see the claw marks and it's got a large pad."

Close to where the paw prints were spotted, an artificial lake has been built and Mr Lamond thought that maybe the big cat was coming out of the escarpment to drink there.

"When we take dog for a walk now, there's a track coming out of the bush - it's not a human track, it's an animal track," he said.

"It comes out of long grass, humans haven't made it and every time we walk past it the dog goes berserk and tries to get up the track.

"So it seems like it's coming from the heavy bush behind the showground and coming down the track and walking along past the water course."

Mr Lamond said he hadn't given the rumoured existence of a black panther much thought, but since discovering the paw prints, he has gone back and read Mercury stories of previous claimed sightings.

"You just come to the conclusion that no matter what you think of it, you get back to the fact that it's got to be a big cat - there's no other explanation," he said.

"There's been too many stories and too many sightings. There's got to be something there, hasn't there?"

For years there has been talk of a black cat living in the bush that overlooks the Illawarra; residents have found paw prints along walking trails, have been startled by it while on a hike and have even spotted it along the side of the road.

One Austinmer resident who saw the creature insisted it wasn't a panther at all but a large feral cat.

That's also the opinion of writer Rebecca Lang, who spent 10 years researching her book, Australian Big Cats: An Unnatural History of Panthers.

There are the legends the panther was released by US airmen stationed in Australia during World War II, or that it escaped from a circus.

Ms Lang doesn't buy those, saying it was "far-fetched" that there would be enough wild panthers in the escarpment to be breeding.

She instead goes with the theory that its a super-sized feral cat.

''There seems to be some very interesting evidence that suggests feral cats are actually getting a lot bigger than we otherwise supposed they might," she said.

Mr Lamond suggested one way to know for sure would be if someone were to set up a camera at the site of the paw prints.

"Anyone's got any spare trail cameras, it's a very easy situation to put a couple on star pickets up there beside the track," he said.