Nouvelle-Hollande: Nouvelle Galles du Su…

Famous c.19th engraving of a pair of Spotted-tailed Quolls eating from a seal carcass, from the official accounts of the voyage of exploration and scientific research under the command of Nicholas Baudin, in the ships the Geographe and Naturalist.

The naturalists from the expedition had camped for several days at Sea Elephant Bay on King Island in Bass Strait where they collected specimens of two native cats. The first sighting of quolls were made by Joseph Banks on 1 May 1770 at Botany Bay. ‘Named the ‘je-Quoll’ by the natives’, August 1770 Joseph Banks. Julian Crozet, observed March 1772, ‘Our hunters met a tiger cat and found several holes like those in a warren’, Blackman’s Bay, Tasmania.

Common names: Spotted-tailed Quoll, Tiger Cat, Tiger Quoll & Spotted-tailed Native Cat.
Binomial name: Dasyurus maculatus
First described: Kerr 1792
Distribution: SA, VIC, TAS, NSW & QLD

From Francois Peron’s, Voyage de Decouvertes aux Terre d’Australes. (Baudin Voyage)