Australian History
Heather Field of Queensland, Jagsun Bengals was the first to import the Bengal into Australia in 1994. Heather purchased Ch CD Jaguarundi Sun (brown spotted) born 16th December 1993 from Rebecca Miles in Houston Texas USA. There was no protocol at that time to legally import Bengals into Australia, so Heather and Joy Lyons from Gympie, worked closely with John Hayhoe of AQIS Canberra to establish a protocol to bring Bengals into the country. Heather had to wait for the cogs to turn before she could bring “Jag” home.
Along the way Heather attended many, many Government meetings when they tried to outlaw the breed and have her cats destroyed. Heather has numerous amount of newspaper clippings as testimony from these terrible times. It was the sighting of one of these newspaper clippings by us in a Brisbane newspaper that bought our attention to the Bengal Cat and being a lover of “large cats” we were very interested in acquiring a Bengal Cat as part of our family. We acquired our very first Bengal – Jagsun Copper Fusion aka “Dozer” on 15th September 2006
“Jag” was the first cat to be imported into Australia under the legal Bengal protocol, the first registered Bengal in Quarantine in Australia (Jag was held at Eastern Creek, Sydney). Heather held numerous meetings with Councils giving seminars on the breed to have them accepted in Australia. Jag was the first Bengal accepted by Australia Cat Controls…and as such was recognised by Australia Cat Controls as Founder of the Bengal Breed.
The second import into Australia and once again by Heather was a female from the United Kingdom “Nyali Pash Wari” (brown spotted) born 12th December 1993. Ali had a shorter time in quarantine and actually arrived home before Jag. The resulting litter was the first bengal litter registered in Australia. Heather then held a number of seminars at the request of ACF … Australian Cat Federation teaching Judges the Standard of the Bengal and the finer points which was considered important for the Judging of the Bengal.
The second litter from Jag x Ali, was ELEVEN kittens. All kittens were supplement fed, all survived and thrived, so they quickly helped get the Australian Bengal population off to a flying start.