MYSTERIOUS panther-like creatures, long reported to be stalking the outskirts of Sydney, could be moving towards homes. With at least 19 sightings reported this year, big cat hunters believe they're becoming bolder as they search for food and mates. Cryptozoologist Rex Gilroy said the elusive creatures - usually reported as fleeting sightings at night, often on lonely country roads

Bushman Gavin Noakes found large paw prints bigger than a man's fist at 12cm to 15cm wide. The depth of the paw print suggested a heavy creature, in line with a number of recent sightings of a panther-like creature of about 30kg with a black-to-dark brown coat. "There's a migratory pattern in which they seem to come out of Grose Vale and penetrate out into the back of the Kenthurst scrub, moving back and forth," he said. "Two breeding populations of about half a dozen each have developed there." He believes they are distant relations of the extinct Thylacoleo carnifex owen, a marsupial lion that survived the Ice Age.