The hunt for London's thylacines shows a greater truth about Australian extinction

On a cold, dark night in the winter of June 2017, hundreds of people gathered on the lawns of Hobart’s parliament house to join a procession that carried an effigy of a giant Tasmanian tiger (thylacine) to be ritually burnt at Macquarie Point.
In an act called "the Purging", part of MONA's Dark Mofo festival, participants were asked to write their "deepest darkest fears" on slips of paper and place them inside the soon-to-be incinerated thylacine's body. This fiery ritual, a powerful cultural moment, reflects the complex emotions that gather around this extinct creature.