Well known bushman and head ranger of the Cradle Mountain / Lake St. Clair National Park in the 1930s, Arthur D. Fergusson, better known as "Fergy", often spoke of seeing tiger tracks in the snow in the Lake Hugel area of the park.  On one occasion, Fergy found tell-tale signs in the snow revealing a tiger's relentless pursuit of a Bennett's wallaby right into the freezing waters of the lake.

    In 1914, a wartime emergency arose when a German submarine was reported lurking in Bathurst Harbour along the West Coast.  Its mission was to intercept a convoy of troop ships leaving Hobart, and the government of the day was stung into action to prevent a pending catastrophe.  Authorities quickly organised a party that comprised some of the finest local bushmen, including Frank Marriott and Albert Quarrell of Tyenna, along with the government statistician, Frank Giblin.  Two notable absentees were Tom Marriott of Tyenna and John McCallum of National Park, both unavailable at the time.  The party walked the old Port Davey Track, originally cut as a lifeline for mariners shipwrecked along the wild West Coast.  The track had lain unused since the 920-ton iron bark the Brier Holme was wrecked in 1905, and few had intimate knowledge of traversing this rugged terrain.  Fortunately the information proved incorrect, and when no evidence of enemy activity was discovered, homing pigeons were released at Bathurst harbour to relay the good news to authorities in Hobart.

    John McCallum did walk the track alone a few years later, save for his young fox terrier dog.  Travelling by boat from Hobart to Strahan, McCallum became so ill with seasickness that he begged the captain to let him and his dog off near Port Davey.  The pup found it hard to keep up the pace and John was forced to carry it most of the way home.  The pair had not travelled far before becoming aware of a large Tasmanian tiger tagging along behind.  The tiger followed them for several days, even keeping watch from a safe distance as they slept close to their camp fire.  Eventually, the tiger dropped off as the pair made their way across the Arthur Plains to Junction Creek.  John McCallum had a good knowledge of the Tasmanian tiger, having claimed bounty on at least four tigers, all caught in the Ellendale-National Park areas of the Derwent Valley.  This grand old Tasmanian bushman passed on aged 99 years in 1978.

    There were a host of trailblazers emanating from the Tyenna region in the early years of last century; all top bushmen in their own right.  Men of the calibre of J. G. Timbs, Lewis Chaplin, Robert, Percy, Robert Snr, Frank Marriott and Walter Mullins, plus the Salter brothers and Jim Loveluck from Fitzgerald to name a few.

    Pioneer families had pushed up the valley late in the 19^th century, hacking their way through the thick blackwood forests lining the Tyenna River to take up selections in the virgin bush in what was to become known as Tyenna.  For the more adventurous, from there the long, hard slog began into the Florentine Valley and beyond to the Gordon River country of the southwest.  Further settlements were established; first at Fitzgerald and later at Maydena.

    The mainstays of the bushman's diet were bacon, damper, tea and rice; this supplemented by locally snared or shot game.  The old bushmen told tales of the tiger prowling around bush camps at night, lured in by bacon fat left in frying pans around the camp fire; it appeared the tiger had a love of pork products.  They said a tiger will follow a wallaby relentlessly through the bush until it collapses through sheer exhaustion, and that the tiger is a very timid animal, easily scared off by bright lights at night; an animal that will follow you through the bush making a pig-like clopping noise, and that in the wild, it only ever eats what it kills itself, never touching carrion.  The old yarn that domestic dogs were terrified of tigers didn't always ring true.  The majority of dogs were; the mere whiff of a tiger's scent sending even the toughest of canines running the other way.  Some dogs were especially trained from the cradle to hunt tigers, and the best evidence of this is found in the records of the Van Diemen's Land Company at Woolnorth.  These dogs were large, rangy, staghound / Irish wolfhound crosses that worked in pairs, the lightly-built tiger quickly falling victim to their vicious onslaught.