Amanda Dutton was driving home with her kids at about 4.30pm on Saturday afternoon after a day at the football in Mt Beauty, Victoria, when she got the fright of her life.
Key points:
- A large black cat was spotted darting across the road in the Mitta Valley on Saturday
- A Victorian government report says ferals are being mistaken for big cats
- Big cat sightings have been reported around the country for 200 years
She was heading toward Mitta Mitta on a dirt track when she turned the corner and she saw a large black cat jump off the road and into the bush.
"It would have been as high as our kitchen bench," Ms Dutton said.
"It was less than 20 metres away from us and its tail would have been at least a metre long.
"You can call me crazy, but I know what I saw."
A 2012 study by the Victorian government found that it was almost certainly feral cats being spotted in cases like these, but even so the sighting gave Ms Dutton an awful fright.
"We had to pull up because we were so freaked out," she said.
"When we got to the Mitta Brewery I told my friends what happened and they laughed and said it was the Mitta panther."