Australia's Strangest Mysteries

by John Pinkney

  ‘Next day, rather more courageous, I went back to the area with a friend. Beside Canning Dam we found an array of splay-toed footprints. They were all enormous and seemingly made by the same animal. Then, deeper in the bush, we discovered three springy beds – or what I’d call bowers – built from branches and leaves. They were set into holes in the ground, roughly symmetrical enough to suggest they’d been deliberately dug. Around these constructions were scatterings of bush cones, which obviously had been chewed.

  ‘Over the ensuing three years I thought about those bowers quite a lot. I was in little doubt they’d been built by something intelligent – but I do concede that you could also use the term “intelligent” to describe a bird’s building of its nest.

  ‘I got to know several people in this area who’d seen the Yowie. One couple, camping in Whistlestop Gully, were so frightened by the creature snuffling around their tent that they took potshots at it. And I heard rumours that an elderly man, who vanished in the same region several years ago, was thought to have been abducted by one of the things. I’ve read a few suggestions that Yowies might be friendly – but I’m not so sure.

  Anyway, after a lot of questioning and thinking, I finally decided I should go back and photograph those bowers. They were still there, but obviously abandoned. And the dam level had risen, obliterating the footprints.’

  Truckdriver’s Terror on a Lonely Track

  Glenn Mackie, a truckdriver, had never given Yowies a thought – until the night he had to pull up hastily on a bush road. From Moree, NSW, he wrote: ‘In 1985 I was hauling freight from Sydney to Brisbane. About 50 kilometres into the Pilliga Scrub – between Coonabarabran and Narrabri – two of my trailer tyres blew out. Just as I’d finished changing them I heard a loud rustling, which I assumed was a kangaroo in the bushes.

  ‘I packed the tools away and walked to the back of the trailer. That was when I got the shock of my life. A dark huge figure suddenly stepped out of the bushes and stood staring at me.

  At first I thought it was a motorist – but I was curious that I’d seen no car lights. I asked, “What are you doing out here?”

  ‘In reply it made a low grumbling sound, then bolted back into the heavy timber. It was only then that I saw it was wearing no clothes, but was covered with black spiky hair. From that day on I’ve never pulled up within 100 miles of that spot.’

  Australian newspapers have been interviewing Yowie witnesses since the early years of settlement. A particularly intriguing modern account – which offers a possible clue to the monsters’ dietary habits – was published in Victoria’s Herald Sun (19 April 2000):

  A Queensland man claims to have had a close encounter with a Yowie. Ashley Mills, 23, said he saw the mythical beast last Friday near Taree.

  The Brisbane security worker said he was walking about 100 metres from a house on a northern NSW property when a rock landed at his feet. ‘Then a kangaroo ran out of the bush and another rock landed a bit further away from me,’ he said.

  ‘Then I heard this crunching sound. I ran around a clump of bush and [the creature] had his back to me. He was cross... that kangaroo was meant to be his lunch.’ Mr Mills said the creature, about 2.4 metres tall and covered with greyish-brown hair, then bounded away.

  In October 1994 Queensland’s Sunshine Coast Sunday published the testimony of a woman motorist whose car struck a humanoid entity on Forest Drive near Tewantin. Senior Constable Mike Buckley said Noosa police were investigating a possibly related incident involving a ‘large hairy creature about eight feet tall’, seen in Tinbeerwah Forest. The newspaper noted that Yowies had previously been seen on the Sunshine Coast in 1978, 1979, 1980, 1990 and 1992.

  So consistent were nationwide descriptions of Yowies that in 1997 Germany’s Geo magazine sent a science journalist to Australia to search for answers. The German investigator teamed with Dr Helmut Loofs-Wissowa of the Australian National University. As in all previous attempts of the kind, their quest was largely unsuccessful.

  But the ‘Hairy Men’ continue to manifest themselves. In 2004 the Australian cryptozoologist Tim Bull described an incident in the Tanimi Desert, 640 kilometres south of Darwin.

  A farmer was woken at 3 am by a terrible screeching noise, like nothing she had heard before, just outside her bedroom window.

  ‘When she went to check she was overwhelmed by a disgustingly foul odour that made her dry-retch. At the same time she saw a darkly coloured creature, about seven feet tall, with hair about hand-length, no neck and long arms, crash through her back fence.’

  Next morning Northern Territory police found numerous immense footprints on the property. A two-inch irrigation pipe had been partially chewed through. Such incidents have prompted theories that drought might be forcing the NT’s Yowie population into inhabited areas, in search of water.

  The Tree-feller Who Fled the Forest

  Some witnesses tell stories of Yowies taking action to protect their bush environment.

  In 2003 a Canadian lumberjack holidaying in Queensland decided to fell trees in a forest at Ormeau. As he applied his noisy chainsaw to an ancient trunk his flesh began to prickle. Something prompted him to look up – and he saw a face, framed in black hair, staring down at him from a fork.

  Terrified, the visitor ran. The creature dropped from its tree and chased him through the bush, until he reached his car, only seconds ahead of it, and drove away.

  Requesting anonymity, the Canadian described his ordeal to dedicated Yowie investigators Nigel and Jeannie Francis. The couple, owners of a Caboolture flooring company, have possibly conducted more Yowie probes than anyone in Australia.

  Their interest in the enigma was sparked during a hiking trip along the Sunshine Coast, when they heard ‘noises coming from the bush that we simply couldn’t identify’.

  Jeannie Francis told the Sunday Mail’s Lou Robson (18 September 2005): ‘You know you’re onto something when you’re walking through the bush and everything just stops. Birds go quiet, crickets are still, there’s no sound – and sometimes there’s the most awful smell.’

  Nigel and Jeannie take their hobby – or vocation – very seriously. They patrol Queensland forests equipped with recording and photographic equipment, night-vision goggles and camouflage gear, carefully assessing and photographing any anomalies they find.

  In 2003 they invited the biologist and environmental consultant Gary Opit to visit an area where trees had sustained ‘large bite-marks’. Opit said: At first I thought they’d be the beak-marks of yellowtailed black cockatoos, searching for wood-boring grubs. Those marks are usually horizontal, but these were vertical.

  ‘They appeared to have been created by a large thumbnail, not consistent with anything in the Australian bush.’

  Nigel and Jeannie Francis are creating a videotape archive of interviews with Yowie observers. Witnesses include:

  A horticulturist who was collecting plants when a black furry entity of enormous size suddenly appeared in front of him. The collector dropped his plant specimens and ran.

  An elderly couple who camped in a mobile home at Beerwah, on the Sunshine Coast, in 2002. They were woken from sleep when ‘something’ of prodigious strength picked up their van and shook it.

  Yowies in National Library

  Through the 19th and 20th centuries, Australian newspaper coverage of ‘hairy man’ sightings was so widespread that no scholar, even today, has managed to assemble all the reports into a single document. However, the investigator Graham C. Joyner has made a praiseworthy start by confining his research to the Monaro and South Coast regions of New South Wales. Graham’s collection (from which three clippings are excerpted here) is now held in the National Library, Canberra.

  Cooma Express, 30 November 1894

  On 3 October last, young Johnnie McWilliams was riding from his home at Snowball to the Jimden P.O. When about halfway the boy was startled by the sight of a wild man (who) suddenly appeared from behind a tree, stood looking at him for a few second
s, then ran for the wooded hills.

  The boy had ample time to observe the beast: ‘a big man covered with long hair. ‘It tore up the dust with its nails, and in jumping a log it struck its foot against a limb, when it bellowed like a bullock. When running, it kept looking back at the boy until it disappeared. It was three o ‘clock in the afternoon and the boy describes everything he saw minutely. He is a truthful and manly little fellow, well acquainted with all the known animals of the New South Wales bush...and persists that he could not have been mistaken.

  The Queanbeyan Observer, 13 February 1903

  Joseph and William Webb were out in the ranges preparing to camp for the night. They heard a deep guttural bellowing and then a crashing of the scrub. Next moment a thing appeared, walking erect...It was hirsute, and its head was so deep between its shoulders that it was scarcely perceptible. It was challenged, ‘Who are you? Speak or we’ll fire.’ Not an intelligent word came in response; only the bellowing. Aim was taken; the crack of the rifle rang out along the gully; but the thing, if hit, was not disabled; for at the sound of the shot it turned and fled. The two gentlemen, filled with amazement and curiosity, went to where they had shot this formidable creature.

  There were its footprints, long like a man’s, but with spread and stride much longer than a man. They saw no blood or other evidence that the shot had taken effect.

  The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 October 1912

  [from an article written for the Herald by cattleman-poet Sydney Jephcott]

  After nearly 50 years spent in the bush, with every sense alert to catch the secrets of the wilds, not the faintest scintilla of first-hand evidence had reached me that any animal of importance remained unknown in our country. But 10 days ago, when riding through the jungle which lies on the eastern slopes of Bull Hill, I noticed on a white gum trunk a series of scratches... in series of three on one side meeting a single scratch from the opposite direction, as would be made by three fingers and the thumb of a great hand with abnormally strong and large nails. Beginning at a height of about seven feet, all these scratches were made by a right hand, suggesting that the creature which had made them shared a peculiarity of mankind.

  I judged that some animal unknown to science was at large in this country, but took no further action. However, on 12 October I learned that George Summerell, a neighbour, while riding from Bombala to Bemboka, had ridden close to a strange animal... drinking from the creek. Summerell at first thought, ‘What an immense kangaroo!’ But, hearing the horse’s feet on the track, it rose to its full height, about 7 feet, and looked quietly at the horseman. Then, stooping again, it finished its drink, and picking up a stick, walked steadily away and disappeared amid the rocks and timber.

  Summerell described the face as being like an ape or man, minus forehead and chin, with a great trunk, and arms that nearly reached its ankles.

  I rode up to the scene on Monday morning. About a score of footprints attested the truth of Summerell’s account; the handprints where the animal had stooped at the water’s edge being especially plain. These prints differed from a large human hand, chiefly in having the little fingers set much like the thumbs (a formation explaining the 5-7 series of scratches on the white gum tree.)

  A striking peculiarity was revealed, however, in the footprints: these resembled an enormously long and ugly foot (with) only four toes – long (nearly five inches), cylindrical and showing evidence of extreme flexibility. Even in the prints which had sunk deepest into the mud there was no trace of the ‘thumb’ of the characteristic ape’s foot. Beside the new prints there were old ones discernible, showing that the animal had crossed the creek at least a fortnight previously.

  After a vexatious delay I was able on Wednesday to take three plaster of Paris casts: one of a footprint in very stiff mud, another in very wet mud, and a third of the hand. These I have sent to Professor Edgworth David at the university, where no doubt they can be seen by those interested...

  * * *

  Portrait of an Ogre

  Thousands of encounters with the elusive Yowie have been described in newspapers, journals and books from the 1790s to the present day. Scholars have noted the consistency of these reports (many written in remote areas before the advent of the telegraph or radio). Witnesses, in overwhelming numbers, have described these characteristics:

  The creature, on average, is between two and a half to three metres tall, but may in some cases stand at four metres. With the exception of the face its body is covered in long hair, which can be black, reddish-brown or grey.

  It emits a powerful odour, often unbearable to humans.

  NewsPix/News Limited

  __________

  * This optical peculiarity is not confined to Australia. Internationally, cryptozoologists, including Britons Janet and Colin Bord, have assessed thousands of anomalous animal sightings, ranging from Yeti to Bigfoot. In their classic study Alien Animals (Nelson) the Bords note that a significant percentage of witnesses describe eyes that glow red in artificial light.

  * * *

  The eyes may glow red in artificial light – a characteristic also ascribed to such anomalous animals as the Sasquatch and the Abominable Snowman.

  It has fangs on the upper jaw and long claws on the feet and arms, which hang lower than those of humans or simians.

  It leaves footprints of immense size. Some have measured up to 50 centimetres long and 20 centimetres across.

  It is omnivorous, digging for grubs, ripping up vegetable crops and tearing fruit from trees. Farmers have seen it absconding with lambs, pigs and chickens and dismembering animals as large as cows. In their folklore Aboriginals speak of Yowies killing kangaroos. Several witnesses have seen Yowies violently shaking trees, to dislodge their native prey. The Yowie seems to know that cans may contain food – and will steal tins of any kind from campsites.

  Some witnesses have wondered whether the Yowie might be intelligent, as seemingly evidenced by the symmetrical patterns it scratches into trees and its ability to manipulate latches on farmhouse and barn doors.

  Most Yowies are reportedly timid – and will run rather than risk harm to themselves. But sometimes one of the creatures will react violently, using its claws or a stick as a weapon.

  * * *

  Fear on a Tasmanian Lake

  In 1992 two Melbourne brothers, Jason and Brad Williams, approached me with an extraordinary story.

  They said they been fishing in Lake St Clair, Tasmania, when ‘something’ surfaced from the deep cold water and violently rocked their boat. ‘It was snakelike, but vastly longer and thicker than any snake,’ Jason said. ‘We estimated that it was about 10 metres long – and it swam past us at such high speed that it almost capsized our boat.’

  This was not the first report of a Loch Ness-style monster in the lake (Australia’s deepest). Several years earlier a veteran fisherman, Reg Cabalzar of Launceston, had collected numerous testimonies from other lake users who claimed they had seen the mega-reptile.

  ‘The first time I became aware something odd lived in the water was in 1965,’ Reg told me. ‘One weekend I went fishing with my brother and a friend. I sheared off to do a bit of fly-fishing while they stayed by the river. When I got back at dusk they were very quiet and scared.

  ‘I finally wormed it out of them that they’d seen an iron-grey, reptilian creature, about 20 metres long with a massive four-metre neck, thrusting out of the water. They’d been fishing in the river when the thing just cruised past. It frightened them so badly that they dropped their rods and ran.’

  Tasmania has thousands of highland lakes and tarns, in several of which gigantic reptiles have reportedly appeared. Like their counterparts, described over the centuries in Scotland, Canada, Japan, China and Africa, the creatures seem – despite their size – to be timid and unaggressive. Their habitat, in every case cold water of tremendous depth, apparently offers a desirable environment for hiding and feeding. A popular theory is that the reptiles are survivors from pre-hist
ory.

  Some parts of Tasmania’s Lake St Clair are so deep that no diver has ever reached the bottom. Local witnesses believe its allegedly immense inhabitants command a large territory – swimming at will into the adjoining Lake King William.

  Like Yowies, Australia’s lake and ocean giants share a long history. They not only loom, consistently described, in the lore of Aboriginal tribes separated by vast distances; their activities have been chronicled by many European observers. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries a ‘sea serpent’ was quite regularly reported off the Western Australian coast between Broome and Carnarvon. One witness, standing in a small gathering of spectators, was a colonial chaplain, Reverend S. Brown.

  ‘When it was almost at rest in the water, and all apparently was in view, I estimated the length to be 60 feet. It was straight and taper, like a long spar, with head and shoulders showing well above the surface.

  ‘I can only describe the head as like the end of a log, about two feet in diameter. On the back we noticed several square-topped fins, showing very distinctly above the water.’

  In June 1890, a Miss Lovell was startled by a sea creature of ‘enormous dimensions’ which she found lying, apparently in excellent health, on a beach at Fraser Island’s Sandy Cape. She named the beast Chelosauria lovelli (Lovell’s Tortoise Lizard) and described it in an article for the English magazine Land and Water. Reputedly, it became the only ocean monster ever to be given a scientific name.

  Miss Lovell wrote that she had ventured within a few footsteps of the life form. It sprawled, as if sunning itself, on the sand, where it remained for at least half an hour. The witness judged it be about 27 feet (eight metres) long – and concluded that it was a composite of fish and tortoise. She drew a careful sketch of it (which the journal also published). The Aboriginals to whom she showed the drawing recognised it immediately – calling it, in their language, a ‘dangerous turtle’. They said it had repeatedly invaded their camp – and was so vicious that it had forced them to move inland.