The creature first appeared on 8 January 1998 and nobody knew what it was. Within moments of its discovery, the local folk who lived near Four Mile Beach in Tasmania were talking animatedly of sea monsters. Before the day was out the news was to travel around the world. At least there was some definites proof that water monsters were real because a body had been found.

The day had begun quietly enough for the fishermen on this usually sleep beach. But that peace was shattered when they found something extraordinary that had been washed up by the tide. It was as if a crack had opened up between our and some other reality and left an alien being on our planet.

The dead creature on the beach gave off a bad, fishy odour. Nobody knew what it was. Even those who had fished the local waters for decades had never seen anything like it. Rumours about monsters and invasions from aliens were rife in the local community.

The 'blobster', as some began to call it, was something like a cross between a giant octopus and a hairy cow pat. it was enormous - at least 6m (20ft) long. Yet all that was washed up on the beach was a rotting carcass that was covered in sand and a mass of shaggy hair. This suggested that its original size may have been even larger. Its oval mass was surrounded by what appeared to be many short tentacles or legs that clung to the beach. Nobody could move it because the creature was very heavy indeed.

  ARGUMENTS

Arguments about what it might be began immediately. It was clearly too big to be any of the obvious marine live in the area, such as a dolphin, even if one was so badly mutilated after death. When all the major marine life had been eliminated from the discussion, it was then broached that the creature was a sea monster of the type that used to be reported in apocryphal tales from ancient mariners. More recently these huge dinosaur-like creatures are reported to have moved to the many large lakes that were once fed by the sea. Several of these are situated in the northern hemisphere. These rarely seen creatures are often given pet names by the locals, and tourist industries grow up around them.

But science was never convinced by eyewitness evidence that was unsupported. For scientists demanded physical proof of these creatures before they accepted something that defied their views of the natural world. If monsters lived in the water, they argued, then they also died in the water. Sooner or later one or two of those unknown beasts would have to be washed ashore by freak tides or other conditions. But in several hundreds of years this had not happened. Where were the bodies, they demanded?