Only last Sunday, Mark Gilbert was walking on his 25-hectare property fronting Old Northern Road when a massive black cat walked from left to right in front of him and into the bush.

``This was the smaller one,'' he said. ``Its dad is about as big as a German shepherd, with yellow eyes, a round head and long black tail. I'm terrified for my grandchildren who regularly run through the bush about here.''

Hawkesbury MP Ray Williams detailed many of the recent panther sightings by friends and constituents in a private member's statement to Parliament last Thursday, warning of his fears that a child may be taken.

He outlined how Mark Gilbert's wife, Cheryl, watched in amazement from her kitchen window last week as a large black cat roamed around her backyard, which backs onto the Maroota State Forest.

Mr Gilbert is convinced the cats kill all around the district and den up on his property in a little valley surrounded by deep escarpment bluffs and gorges.

``All our chooks and wallabies have gone, our lyrebirds, too. My neighbour Pat Cooper lost all his peacocks. I took a mould of the paws and a university vet estimates the weight of the critter at 60 kilos.''

Michael Williams, who runs the Centre for Fortean Zoology Australia, and is co-writing a book on the so-called panther, welcomed the news that Premier Nathan Rees is considering a serious investigation into big cat sightings in NSW.

He's been assessing hundreds of panther sightings around Australia since 2001 and is staggered by the sheer volume of reports and other compelling evidence.

``It's patently obvious something's happening in the Australian bush. We don't know if the source of these reports is some kind of introduced exotic cat species or a feral cat mutation, but what we do know is that hundreds of people have seen these animals.''

Mr Williams (for sightings, contact him via email at australianbigcats@gmail.com or directly on 4572-1291, or visit his website at www.australianbigcats.com) cites the case of experienced Victorian sambar deer hunter Kurt Engel as proof that giant cats do exist.

Mr Engel, 67, of Nobel Park, told the Hills News yesterday he photographed the dead cat and cut off its tail after shooting its head off with a 7mm Remington Magnum while hunting deer in rugged terrain near Sale in June, 2005. He'd first noticed large paw prints in a dry creek bed and a little later caught sight of the cat, crouching about 80 metres away.

``I could see the eyes of the cat I kept very quiet,'' he said. ``Suddenly this huge cat charged in my direction, coming low to the ground, straight towards me.''

``The animal veered left at about 60 yards and was making long jumps. I took him on the third jump in the shoulder and then I shot it in the head,'' Mr Engel said. ``It was a million-to-one chance. I've never seen anything like it in 50 years hunting the forests.''

Nearby, Mr Engel found a wombat carcass, freshly killed, with its skull crushed.

The cat was 1.6 metres long and weighed about 40 kilograms. Its DNA was tested at Melbourne University and the result ``felis cattus'' an extraordinary feral cat.