The most recent episode of 'Finding Bigfoot' took place in the Gold Coast region of Queensland, Australia. The 2-hour presentation was fairly interesting and included what may have been actual audio evidence of the elusive Yowie. The general physical description of this creature is very similar to our North American Sasquatch or Bigfoot. The Yowie does seem to show more aggression toward humans.
I've included bits & pieces of information that I have presented previously along with a few new details:
Australian Yowie Hunter Attacked
More graphic photos Cryptomundo.com - It never rains but it pours - in this case, improbable events.
Hot on the heels of last week's wild weather in southeast Queensland comes a hunter of mythological beasts - Tim the Yowie Man.
Tim - who uses no surname and can be almost as elusive as his quarry - says there is a direct correlation between significant rain events and sightings of the yowie.
"The soaked soil and muddy bogs created by the heavy rain are more conducive to animals, including yowies, leaving their footprints,'' Tim said.
He said last week's rain could make "a large hairy bipedal hominoid creature'' uncomfortable and force it from deep jungle canyons into the open.
So Tim has rushed from that other capital of strange mysteries - Canberra - to Springbrook in the Gold Coast hinterland, a village he describes as the yowie capital of Australia for its many sightings.
So far he's seen nothing - but that hasn't put him off.
"I'm quietly confident of finding some sort of evidence such as hair or footprints of the mystery beast,'' he said.
"If I'm really lucky I may even get to see one.''
Dean Harrison of Australian Yowie Research says he has just returned from Springbrook, bearing photographs of footprints he believes are of a female yowie and her young trailing along behind.
"They seem to be quite passive around that area compared to other areas that we've been to,'' Mr Harrison said.
He said tales of yowies near Springbrook date back to before European settlement.
Mr Harrison said on his latest expedition he was rugby-tackled by a yowie at 3am near Gympie.
"This one knocked me flying backwards. I landed in a rockpool,'' he said.
Australian Yowie Research has been nominated for a Bent Spoon Award on the website of Australian Skeptics, a group that investigates paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. - 5/2/2009
*****
Yowie Sighting Reported - Mount George, NSW, Australia
manningrivertimes.com.au - 7/08/2009 - Last Friday night, Faye Burke and her cousin Alana Garnett left their homes in Wingham with a trailer attached to the car.They were driving towards Cundle Flat to load the trailer with fresh pumpkins from Faye's brother's home.
"It was half moonlight, the stars were out and it was a beautiful night," Faye said.
But oddly enough there was not a car on the Nowendoc Road. "I have been driving that road all my life and that's unusual," she said. Driving steadily the pair were approaching Connelly's Creek Gap "just on the other side of Mt George".
"We were about 200 metres from the top of the hill when I clearly remember looking down at the car clock and it was exactly 7.30pm," Faye said.
"I looked back up at the road and I saw ahead in the headlights this big hairy animal thing on the side of the winding road.
"It was about eight foot tall and four foot wide."
Alana said they yelled out "holy hell" along with a list of other unmentionable words. "We panicked," they said.
"I couldn't turn the car around because I had the trailer and the road was too narrow," Faye said.
"I was s**t-scared and thought I better not mess with this thing in case it lifts the trailer up and tips us over the bank edge."
Keeping her foot on the accelerator and speeding past the thing, Faye said she turned to Alana and said: "Did you see that? She said in a scared voice: 'Do you mean that thing that looked like a Big Foot?' I said: No it was a Yowie."
And Alana screamed back: "Same thing!".
"After we reached the top of the hill I wanted to turn around and get a photo with my mobile phone," Faye said.
But Alana was too scared to go back. She said if the passenger window had been wound down she could have reached out and touched it. Faye and Alana said the hairy thing stood perfectly still "like it was at attention".
"Its back was facing us and it was looking into the embankment next to the road and it had dark chocolate brown hair which was all matted," Alana said.
"The breeze of the car made the hair around its neck flick up as we drove past."
Neither Alana or Faye believe it was a person dressed up or a ghost. "It was real," they said.
"And I am absolutely convinced it was a yowie."
Faye just wishes she had gone back and taken a photo.
"I knew people wouldn't believe us and I didn't phone the police because I thought they would think we were loopy."
Faye said: "I am not a drinker and I hadn't been drinking but I did have a beer when I got to my brother's house that night.
"When we arrived at my brother's house we almost fell out of the car," she said. "He told us we both had white faces and we were both trying to tell our story at the same time."
They returned to the exact location the next morning to attempt to find hair samples and footprints and take photos.
"We didn't find any hair but we found an indentation in the ground resembling a giant footprint and a big spot of urine."
She said the urine had stripped part of the bark near a tree and looked like oily spots - "and it stunk".
"I will never forget what we saw," Faye said.
And it is an image neither can take out of their mind.
"I can't sleep at night because I can't stop thinking about it," Faye said.
And Alana said she still sees it when she closes her eyes and tries to go to sleep.
Miraculously when Faye was printing out her photos of the footprint at Big W in Taree, with her daughter, a woman next to her heard her conversation and said she saw a Yowie in Grafton.
"The goose bumps came all over me, up from my heel right up to my head, and I thought thank God for the confirmation that there are other people who have seen one too," Faye said
"I will never stop looking for it." But Alana believes "it is something they will never see again".
On the evening of 31 July this year, two Wingham (NSW) women sighted an eight foot tall hairy creature standing motionless beside Nowendoc Road, about 6 kilometres outside the township of Mount George. On 30/31 August I visited Wingham, interviewed both women and found their stories impressive.
*****
Continued Controversy Over Yowie Sighting in Pilliga Forest, NSW
coonabarabran - A recent sighting of what appeared to be a hairy creature lurking in the Pilliga has Baradine residents wondering if there is some truth to the primeval legend of the yowie. Although the image was fleeting and nobody could describe exactly what they saw, the incident adds mystery to a story that has its roots in Aboriginal folklore. The contentious and potentially scary incident occurred late in the evening of Wednesday, 26 August, when two buses containing high school student members of the Regional Children’s Choir were returning to Baradine from a camp-fire evening at Odell’s Crossing.Coincidentally, the youngsters had been listening to some hair-raising Pilliga tales related to them by local residents, Roy Matthews, Ronnie Magann and Pat Madden. The purpose of the excursion, organised by National Parks & Wildlife, was to give the Moorambilla choir group a feel for the forest. Composer and musician, Dan Walker, has been working with the kids preparing music and song based on the yowie legend.
After enjoying the camp fire stories and billy tea and damper in the heart of the forest, the group set off on the return drive. As the first bus approached Odell’s Crossing, driver Daisy Matthews was startled to see something she believes resembled a strange human moving between the trees. She reports that she had a brief glimpse of a ‘wild looking’ hairy figure running towards the bus. “It seemed to be confused and dazzled by the headlights,” commented Mrs. Matthews. “We were travelling very slowly, but it all happened so quickly and I still wonder if I was seeing things!
“However, most of the kids said they had seen something, but there was such a lot of commotion and noise which really must have scared the creature away.” The driver of the second bus, Cliff Matthews, said that he really could not make a comment other than there was definitely something or someone on the track. He says that a heavy thump against the side of his bus as he approached the creek did cause a brief unnerving moment and there was a good deal of excitement amongst his young passengers.
Yowie-type creatures are common in the legends and stories of Australian Aboriginal tribes and the mid to late 19th century saw a wealth of sightings; most describing a large, gorilla-like creature living in mountainous or forested regions. Over the years there have been many stories of yowie sightings in the Pilliga, in fact there have been more reported yowie sightings in the forest than anywhere else in Australia and it is often known as a ‘hot spot’ for yowie hunters.
The choir kids were eager to hear yarns about the yowie and first hand experiences from local residents. “It is interesting to note that people have gone missing out in the scrub and no trace of them has ever been found,” commented Roy Matthews.
Terrible Sight
“I had a man working for me some years ago who said he had seen a yowie out here and there was no way he was staying out in the forest after dark. “Well, after he told me what it looked like, I was quite happy to start work a bit later in the morning and make sure I finished well before dark! “He said it was a terrible looking thing; like a big gorilla with a large head resembling three porcupines tied together. “It was something I did not want to run into, but I have heard about people who have. This would be the first night I have been in the scrub since then.” Pat Madden said that as a child she was told many different versions of the yowie legend. “We would only go to town once a month and we always made sure that we got home before dark,” related Pat.
“One day we were forced to leave the truck and walk back home through the forest. We felt we were being watched and I think we got back in record time!” NPWS ranger and excursion organiser, Montgomery, related the story about a mysterious disappearance of a whole carcass of beef from the butcher’s shop.“The butcher had left the carcass hanging in his shop overnight and locked up gone,” explained Polly.
“The 500 kilo animal had been carried out of the shop by something with enormous strength. “The incident was reported in the local newspaper at the time.”
Primitive humanoid
Well known yowie hunter Rex Gilroy, has been to the Pilliga Forest, the Warrumbungles and Mt Kaputar National Park in search of the primitive humanoid. On his website he reports that stories of yowie sightings in the Coonabarabran district date back to the 1800's. Just a few years ago a group of tourists reported finding giant ape-like footprints in road side bush in the Pilliga just off the Newell Highway.
Then there is the more recent report from a Sydney motorist who had stopped his car in the Pilliga for a rest and sighted a hairy ape-like creature about 10 feet tall watching him from nearby bush. Whether or not there is a such a creature as a Yowie in the Pilliga Forest has always been a hot topic for controversial debate in Baradine. But, although the infamous creature has successfully hidden for thousands of years, it should be remembered that the Pilliga Yowie, whether fact or fiction, is certainly doing its bit towards putting the forest on the tourist map. Apparently some are hoping that it becomes a major tourist attraction akin to Scotland's Loch Ness monster - believe it or not.
NOTE: a reader in Australia forwarded this article from August 2009 and states that the controversy over this sighting has increased to the point where some people are implying that this was a stunt to draw Yowie hunters and tourists to the area. I don't know the particular Yowie legend for the Pilliga Forest...maybe someone can give us an update...Lon
UPDATE: I received this email from Sharon in Australia...
About a week after this story broke, apparently one of the guys who was telling the kids the Yowie stories admitted to dressing up and pretending to be a Yowie. The driver of the bus and the other guy were in on it too. They didn't mean for it to become such a big deal, they just wanted to give the kids an 'experience'. This particular story was discussed on the Australian Yowie Research forums in October this year, however I've not been able to find the link....the link to the article in the local town paper has disappeared from the site I had bookmarked... I believe the writer was a Sue or Susan Cutts if you want to give digging in the internet files a go. Kind regards,
*****
Former Queensland Senator Recalls Yowie Encounter
A young O'Chee was with a group of 20 fellow TSS students returning from a two-day camp near Springbrook when they saw what they described as a 3m tall hair-covered creature.
To this day, Mr O'Chee is certain what he saw was the mythical yowie.
He told The Gold Coast Bulletin on November 17, 1977 that the animal approached the boys' camp on several occasions, at one stage coming within 10m of their cabins.
"About 20 of us saw it," he said then.
"It was about 3m tall, covered in hair, had a flat face and walked to the side in a crab-like style.
"It smashed small saplings and trees like matchsticks as it careered through the bush, we spotted it several times and once watched it through binoculars. It definitely was there.
"We first saw it just before we returned back to Southport on the afternoon of October 23."
Contacted this week, Mr O'Chee was happy to confirm the story and said his memory of what he saw was as clear to him today as it was 27 years ago.
"I still remember it, I can still see the damn thing," he said.
"The majority of my school chums still remember it, it was such an amazing experience.
"It was a big thing, about 8ft tall through the binoculars, it moved in a crab-like fashion.
"We saw where it had been lying on the grbutt and the impression it left was about 8ft long.
"That night it just ripped up whole shrubs between the creek and where our camp was, right out of the ground, - roots and all. A bloke can't do that, it was quite incredible."
Mr O'Chee said his experience had left him with the certainty that yowies do exist.
"I do believe it. Nothing that has happened since has made me believe otherwise, all I can say is that it did exist when I saw it," he said.
"Stranger things have happened. In the last couple of years they have discovered animals in the South-East Asian jungle that are new that survived the Vietnam War. And Australia has a history of supporting large fauna.
"I know the school (TSS) never went back there (Springbrook).
"Some of us got into trouble for mentioning it but I'm not sorry because it's true.
"I hope it's still out there and if they are we would be wise to just leave them well alone."
Mr O'Chee's sighting is the most famous of reported incidents involving yowies, but there have been thousands of cases around the country of alleged contact with the famed mythical beast.
And yowie hunters say the Gold Coast is is a hot spot.
Tim the Yowie Man said the legend was alive and well in the Gold Coast Hinterland. He said the Gold Coast was 'the Bermuda Triangle of Australia', and Springbrook, a yowie 'hot spot', was known as the heart of yowie country.
Over the past decades, there have been numerous reports of the hairy creature around Springbrook, but the late 1970s were the most prolific period for sightings.
Within a period of five months from October 1977, at least five separate yowie sightings were reported either in, or on the edges of, Lamington National Park, near Springbrook.
In January 1978, a Sydney tourist reported what was believed to be the second sighting of a yowie at Springbrook in as many months.
"It was horrible. A great big hairy beast about 9ft tall, with no neck, and giving off a terrible smell," said the woman. She was with her boyfriend checking out the view from the Best of All Lookout when she saw the creature crashing through the undergrowth.
"If I had been in Africa I might have thought it was a gorilla. In the American Rockies it could have been a bear," said the woman, who wanted only to be known as 'Helen Smith'.
"But really it was none of those things. It seemed to lumber along crabwise and made funny grunting noises. It was hard to see its face but it was certainly flat.
"There didn't seem to be any prominent nose but its eyes had a wicked gleam."
In August 1978, a shy schoolboy reported a strange encounter with a hideous 8ft monster that looked like a baby King Kong.
A then 13-year-old Shaun Cooper said he was terror stricken after sighting 'a dark hairy thing' using its long arms to strip the bark off a tree in bushland near his home at Yakkayne Street, Nerang.
"It was about 2.30pm on a Sunday," he said.
"I had gone for a ride on my bike when I saw it up the hill a bit. It looked real to me and it was clawing the tree.
"Bark was falling down around its body. Then suddenly it turned and looked at me, putting its arms by its side.
"It looked at me from about 50 yards away for no more than three seconds. I turned and just went for my life."
Shaun and his mates later led a hunt for the creature and said they found footprints that closely resembled giant footprints more than 1ft long.
Photographed at the time by The Bulletin, they did resemble large footprints with three or more claw-shaped toes on each foot. The reporter also noted a tree that had bark torn from it as if it had been clawed by an animal.
Other reported sightings from that time included a man who said he saw a yowie peering in at the front door of a Springbrook house in January 1978.
In February that year, a National Parks and Wildlife worker reported seeing a Yowie near the Antarctic Beeches at Springbrook. He said another Springbrook resident had also seen a female yowie with pendulous mammaries.
These were followed by another spate of sightings in the 1990s.
In March 1990, Sydney tourist Craig Turnbull discovered 40cm long, 17cm wide footprints in a creekbed in the Numinbah Valley.
He sent plaster castings to yowie hunter Rex Gilroy, who then mounted an expedition to check on these and other reported sightings and footprint finds in the Lamington Plateau, Woodenbong and Kyogle areas.Australia's answer to Tibet's abominable snowman or yeti and North America's bigfoot, the yowie is the subject of myth and legend.
Despite thousands of reported sightings from around the country, the fact that no one has ever snared even a hair from a yowie's head has never dulled the thrill of the chase for yowie hunters.
And Tim the Yowie man, who has been hunting yowies for the past decade, said the huge number of sightings over the years had led him to believe that the yowie, like the truth, was out there.
"Thousands of people have reported seeing these creatures, right back to the Aborigines, and there is no doubt that they have seen what they believe is a yowie," he said.
"That many sightings can't all be hoaxes and they go back well before gorilla suits existed."
Tim said the yowies described in each of the sightings contained plenty of similarities.
The creature often reeks, it lopes sideways like a crab, it grows to 9ft tall, it makes strange grunting noises and when provoked or alarmed gives a high-pitched shriek.
"Most of the sightings are fairly similar although the height can change," he said.
"In north Queensland they are called Quinkins and can reach 2m tall, but in central Queensland they are much shorter."
Tim said the Springbrook yowies were renowned for one very prominent feature - they stink.
"There is a report of a ranger there in the early 90s at the Best of All Lookout who vomited at the terrible smell soon after seeing what he claimed was a yowie," he said.
"They have been reported to smell like rotten eggs, probably because they live in the rainforest where they are constantly damp."
But Tim himself was mystified that the number of reported sightings have dwindled to virtually nothing in the past few years.
"The biggest thing to happen in yowie sightings was back in 2000 when a businessman in Canberra managed to get video footage of a black hairy ape-like creature about 50km west of Canberra," he said.
"I went to the location and we were unable to rule it out as a hoax. It is the best evidence we have seen in years.
"But yes, I have started to wonder myself what has happened to the yowies. What happened to all the sightings?
"They seem to have vanished into thin air."
Tim said he believes prolonged drought and development, esp-ecially in areas like the Gold Coast, may have wiped out many yowies or driven them deeper into less developed areas like the mountains in the Border Ranges around Kyogle and Woodenbong.
"Yowies are traditionally said to be shy creatures and they wouldn't like being confronted by a bulldozer moving in on their space," he said.
"But where they have gone is a mystery, just like the yowies themselves are."
And one person who has finally 'fessed up to a fake sighting, 25 years after the event, is Sean Pask. He told The Bulletin in January 1979 that he and three mates saw a yowie in swampy bushland at Hollywell.
"We've seen a horrible hairy thing down in the bush at Hollywell and it grunted and it smelled like yuk," the boys told a Bulletin reporter over the phone.
"And no one believes us and we're sick of people laughing at us and this morning we saw it again - well not exactly saw it, but we did hear it. Honest."
Sean, then 11, his brother Paul, 12, and mates Tyson Franklin, 12, and Peter Loh, 12 lured a Bulletin reporter out into the 'bush' to tell the story of their amazing sighting of the Hollywell Horror, and get their picture in the paper.
But Sean, now 36 and a construction worker living in Brisbane, this week admitted, 'we made it up'.
"I'm the only one who will admit it, the others won't talk," he said.
"It was just four boys mucking around in the bush.
"In those days it was forest all around, we thought we heard something, scared ourselves stupid and the story just grew from there.
"We thought we'd have a bit of a lark and we rang the paper.
"It didn't take much to get our imaginations going in those days. It was a good story at the time."
*****
The Wild Hairy Man of the Blue Mountains
Encounters with the “hairy man” of the rugged Blue Mountains just west of Australia’s largest metropolis, Sydney, have been recorded from the time colonial settlers first appeared in the area. While long before the settlers’ arrival, the original inhabitants always feared and respected the elusive, hairy hominid, often referred to as the yowie or yahoo.
Here we look at some of those early reported encounters, but first some personal experiences with what might just be the legendary hairy man of the Blue Mountains.
Near my home in the Blue Mountains is a fire trail that winds down towards a creek flowing through a steep gully thick with rainforest-like vegetation. While close to civilisation, it is rugged bushland. I half-jokingly refer to this as the “Yowie track”. Why? Because I’ve had a number of unnerving encounters while walking my dog along that track.
At one point during that first trek along the Yowie track, I suddenly heard a loud snapping sound. I stopped walking. It sounded all too close. Seconds later, I heard three or four heavy (make that very heavy) footsteps in the nearby scrub. I’ve heard many kangaroos and wallabies hop through the bush in my time, but this was different. These sounded distinctly bipedal with a huge gait. Although only a short distance away, the bush was thick and I couldn’t see what had taken those steps. I didn’t want to. But I knew something was there, and that after taking only a few steps it had stopped. I suddenly felt an eerie sensation of being watched. My dog, a young pup at the time, was oblivious. I quietly made an about face and we quickly got out of there. Continue reading at weirdaustralia
NOTE: My friend David has lived in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales near Katoomba for over 25 years. He and his wife have a large garden and patio in back of their house which is surrounded by heavy forest. Neither have ever witnessed a Yowie...but on several occasions (while they were away) something with significant strength has come onto the property and thrown large heavy objects all about...including 200 lb flower pots and a medium sized lawn tractor. They have now setup security cameras...but the being hasn't been back. Several residents near him have reported similar activity including a woman who caught a glimpse of the being. The description fits that of a Yowie. I need to have David write up an article...he's had a few interesting encounters over the years. Lon
The Yowie: In Search of Australia's Bigfoot
Weird Australia: Real Reports of Uncanny Creatures, Strange Sightings & Extraordinary Encounters
Tracking the Man-beasts: Sasquatch, Vampires, Zombies, and More
