Meet the man who claims he’s been almost killed by a yowie — twice

(Note for non-Australians: The "Yowie" is Australia's version of "Bigfoot")

From: news.com.au...

YOU have probably never seen a yowie. You might not have even heard of them.

But one man has not only dedicated his life to hunting down the mythological beast, he says he’s been almost killed by one — twice.

Yowie researcher Dean Harrison has described his too-close encounters with the mysterious apelike creature, which is comparable to the North American Sasquatch or the Himalayan yeti.

He says he was nearly killed by a yowie on two occasions, first in Ormeau in the Gold Coast hinterland and again in Kilkivan near Gympie.

“That was a game changer. I can’t go back into the bush by myself. I just got hit with a big dose of reality,” he toldQT.

“I nearly got taken down by one at Ormeau in 1997 and that was really scary. It was only by the grace of God that I survived.

“I made a phone call at 11pm in a clearing before going into the bush and if I hadn’t I wouldn’t be here today. This thing really meant business.

“But the crunchier was in 2009 at Kilkivan and if a few guys weren’t there to rescue me I wouldn’t be here. That took a good eight months to get over.

“The scary thing is that yowies have a massive advantage over us because of their eyesight in the dark. The thing that knocked me over ran down a hill in pitch darkness past obstacles, tree, and logs. The angles were so steep but it sprinted down.

“It didn’t miss a beat. The one that chased me at Ormeau was the same.”

The yowie is Australia’s very own Bigfoot. They are reputed to live in the wilderness and witnesses claim to have seen them in all states and territories on the Australian mainland.

Ipswich, west of Brisbane, is right now considered a yowie hotspot among researchers.

Yowies go by a few names in various regions — puttikan, yahoo and tjangara among them — and tales of their existence have long featured in Aboriginal stories and oral histories.

The first so-called interaction between a yowie and a white man was thought to be in 1882, involving amateur naturalist Henry James McCooey somewhere between Ulladulla and Bateman’s Bay on the NSW coast.

But you’re more likely to encounter a yowie in the form of the chocolate bar that shares its name.

Yowies, like the Abominable Snowman, are overwhelmingly considered the stuff of legend, perhaps even an endearing part of Australian folklore. Alleged sightings have been deemed misidentification or pure hoax.

But a significant community of believers, such as Mr Harrison, are adamant these two-metre-tall creatures do exist, and are roaming freely in the Australian bush.

He told the QT he believed the yowie could be a Homo erectus, which is thought to be an extinct species of hominid.

“They are said to be extinct but there are so many sightings, almost daily, that can’t be ignored,” Mr Harrison said.

“It has been happening ever since white settlers arrived here. We are told by the Aboriginal people about the hairy man in the bush and we thought it was a ploy to scare us away.

“But as we were building roads and towns in virgin forests we were seeing them all around the country at the same time.

“They were reporting back to London that we had our own indigenous primate.

“I think their genes are very strong and that they might have a life expectancy pretty close to ours. Maybe not as long as ours, because if something goes severely wrong they can’t go to the doctor.”

That’s not all. Mr Harrison, who has been researching yowies for 20 years, also says many people who go missing in the bush were likely abducted by the creatures. He has even claimed he once saw a yowie get tagged with a tracking device by intelligence agents at a rural Queensland army base in the 1990s.

However, ASIO has confirmed it is “not currently monitoring any yowies”.

But not only are they out there, they might also be able to speak English and Latin, another witness, Tony Duffy, claims.

He said he encountered a yowie one night in the bush near Gympie.

“I got a fright and so did he,” he told the Gympie Times.

“He was quickly able to learn a few words in English and we spoke for about two hours. They’re very intelligent.”

He said the yowie returned the next night “with his wife and daughter”.

Mr Duffy believes yowies are endangered creatures whose basic shelters in forests are often destroyed by humans.

“My whole mission is to protect them and to convince people to leave them alone and not hurt them,” he said.

“In the last 12 months I have had close contact with yowies on at least seven occasions.

“These creatures must be protected and respected. Yowies are clearly ‘the missing link’ that scientists have looked for decades. I believe they are the greatest discovery in the history of natural science.”

Former Queensland senator Bill O’Chee has also claimed to have seen a “hairy, apelike thing that probably would have stood about eight feet (2.4m) tall” at a campsite at the Gold Coast hinterland in the 1970s.

Just as there are countless reports by sceptics on the internet that scoff at the suggestion of yowies, there are earnest claims to the contrary.

And not just in Queensland — Mr Harrison’s website has videos of eyewitness testimonies of sightings in places such as Brooklyn, Grafton and Kempsey in NSW, Kalamunda in Western Australia and Bendigo and Beauchamp Falls in Victoria.

Aside from these accounts, evidence for yowies has included unusual nocturnal noises, scratchings on tree bark and casts of footprints.

These have each been dismissed by sceptics — noises can belong to other creatures, scratching can be caused by lightning strikes, footprints can be faked.

So there remains no irrefutable proof that yowies exist. But pulses did race in 2013 when Oxford University genetics professor Bryan Sykes claimed he had used DNA testing of hair samples to solve the mystery of the yeti. The results were subsequently challenged.

But Professor Bill Laurance from James Cook University says we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the dedicated work of cryptobiologists, such as Dean Harrison, as they hunt down these elusive beasts.

“While it’s tempting to giggle occasionally, cryptobiologists have made many valuable discoveries,” he said in 2013, pointing to Lazarus species such as the Mindoro fruit bat, the Laotian rock rat and Australia’s mountain pygmy possum and Wollemi pine.

I have always been "on the fence" regarding the existence of the creatures known as "Bigfoot", "Yowie", "Sasquatch" etc. I hear the arguments that there would have to be many of them to sustain a breeding population and as a result we should have seen them all over the place publicly by now. But, looking at maps of the Earth it is easy to see that there is plenty of uninhabited space, particularly here in Australia, for something that large to quite easily hide.

My interest in the subject was recently rekindled after I moved to a farm that, I found out later, is right in the middle of a known Yowie/Bigfoot hotspot in NSW. One of these days I might even get myself some nightvision equipment and go for a wander.....

Interesting accounts. I remember watching an interview with a guy who claimed that in the middle of the night a Yowie ran down an embankment and shoulder checked him leaving him half dazed on the ground as the thing walked around him briefly a few feet away as if gloating about punking a human. Wonder if its the same guy.

Also of note is that the Yowie descriptions differ from sasquatch descriptions both in size, hairyness and demeanor. The yowie being less hairy, much smaller max 7 foot, and much meaner.

They also say the southern sasquatches reported in the south east US "Skunk apes" are relatively smaller and meaner than the pacific north west sasquatch, although just as hairy.

Sounds to me like the Yowie could be more relic hominid than ape. Especially if it's reportedly picking up human words here and there and "conversing"

a reply to: BASSPLYR

I vaguely remember reading or watching that interview.

I regularly go outside in the middle of the night to urinate (we're on tankwater here so I try to save water where I can), and several times I have had "that feeling" of something watching me from the darkness - and no I'm not talking about sheep or cows or other farm-related animals. I've even seen my cat come bolting inside several times from outside looking like something had just scared the living bejesus out of him.

Now that I'm talking about it I'm getting more and more tempted to go and price some nightvision equipment lol.

originally posted by: BASSPLYR

Sounds to me like the Yowie could be more relic hominid than ape. Especially if it's reportedly picking up human words here and there and "conversing"

I don't know that I fully believe the accounts of people having conversations with them, but I guess it's not out of the realm of possibility considering the amount of time they have had to evolve.

a reply to: Kryties

The interview you sorta remember. Was it a big guy with a white heavy beard? That's the guy in the interview i remember, I think.

To be fair me too. I don't subscribe to the whole sasquatch has a language as purported by the Recordings of the Samurai Chatter "Sierra Sounds Recordings" To me it's just sounds like a 800 pound chimp chattering and vocalizing, and not a language.

I have heard reports about sasquatch mimicking humans to call dogs out beyond the safety of the yard or property.

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
a reply to: Kryties

The interview you sorta remember. Was it a big guy with a white heavy beard? That's the guy in the interview i remember, I think.

It could very well have been, now I have a picture of a "big guy with a white heavy beard" in my head but I don't now whether it was just planted there or it is my actual memory.

To be fair me too. I don't subscribe to the whole sasquatch has a language as purported by the Recordings of the Samurai Chatter "Sierra Sounds Recordings" To me it's just sounds like a 800 pound chimp chattering and vocalizing, and not a language.

I'll have to look that up, I haven't heard that before.

I have heard reports about sasquatch mimicking humans to call dogs out beyond the safety of the yard or property.

Yes I've read similar reports, that is something I could believe. Other animals mimic different things to get their prey, I see no reason why Bigfoot/Yowie/Sasquatch could not have learnt those same behaviours.

Now Im going to be listening out of a night for weird noises lol...

I have mentioned this in a thread before in 2009. Actually this is the reason that I first introduced myself instead of staying a lurker. A lady who we knew very well came into our shop one day almost with her hair standing on end and I asked her what was wrong. Very reluctantly she told me that she had seen a yowie the night before as she was driving home with her friend. They both saw it. It was near the side of the road and had broken and bent some saplings over as if it was trying to build a shelter. She was that close they could see its fur ruffle in the air as they went past. When they got home they hit the bottle to get over it. The only explanation is that someone got dressed up as a yowie and waited at the side of the road but traffic in those parts is pretty sparse. You might be waiting all night for a car to come past.
The interesting thing is that there have been other sightings in that area and the yowies seem to have a sulphur type smell about them.

Yes, I only watched some Yowie Toob clips yesterday. Some people who have seen them, say they have an "Electrical burnt" smell, or like burning bakelite..?
Whatever they are, they are intelligent and elusive......I hope we never find them and "Change" them.

Modern people are still finding lost tribes in the Amazon.......
Another interesting creature is the Chinese "Yeren" (their bigfoot) in Shennongjia Forrest, Hubei.
Vietnam also has the "Tah-ree" bigfoot.
Just for interest, there is a Gibbon sized (relative?) monkey in China that has a flat face, very unusual humanish looking, white fur etc......never seen it b4 other than on a tv special about Shennongjia (China tv) recently.

Just goes to show, there are creatures still out there that most of the "World" are not aware of.

a reply to: Kryties

I don't believe this story. With so many claims on the existence of this creature and so little evidence I wonder how the legend can stay alive so long.

There was a good account of a guy who lived in the blue mountains of NSW and he claimed the authorities knew about them but chose to steer clear of the controversy around them by denying their existence. The real issue is not if that they are real, the real issue is why would our Governments cover up their existence ?

I think its a case of them not being able to be fit into the narrative of evolution and to have an intelligent ape would also challenge the status quo with the religious crowd.

originally posted by: Kryties
(Note for non-Australians: The "Yowie" is Australia's version of "Bigfoot")

The yowie is Australia’s very own Bigfoot. They are reputed to live in the wilderness and witnesses claim to have seen them in all states and territories on the Australian mainland.


My interest in the subject was recently rekindled after I moved to a farm that, I found out later, is right in the middle of a known Yowie/Bigfoot hotspot in NSW. One of these days I might even get myself some nightvision equipment and go for a wander.....

Witnesses claim to have seen them in all states and territories on the Australian mainland.

you.... you ..... you..... mean they have been seen in WA Tttthhhhaaattt means they been seen near me!!!!

Oh I forgot to mention that they went back to the spot the next day and found the shelter thing it was making. They were too scared to get out of the car the night before!

Nonsense. Ive been to many, many national parks, state parks & much more, ive been to very remote parts of Australia & never ever seen anything like a yowie! And i do mean having camped in very remote places for week or so. Hate to break it to you

a reply to: Kryties
Yes, the people that claim there isn't enough room for a breeding population to co-exist with us, clearly have not spent any amount of time in the wilderness. Go to Golden, BC., take the gondola up the mountain, have lunch at the restaurant, and look around. That confirmed my belief in my mind.

I've spent a lot of time in the Australian wilderness, and never directly seen a Yowie, though I've had some strange encounters. One time, near Jindabyne in southern NSW, we were going horse riding and when we got quite deep into the bush, we smelt something rotten and the horses panicked. But horses often react badly to the scent of blood and death, so it was probably just some lost cow that died or whatever. Probably.

There's this cool interview, which is fake (the place mentioned by Bongo doesn't exist), but really cool and creepy, and if you've ever been through Pilliga, you know it's the perfect place for a Yowie to live.

I believe there are people who have had such experiences that appear to have no other explanation (not necessarily the ones who claim to sit down shoot the breeze with them though lol). Though I think there will be another explanation for it, it's almost a certainty that they are not an unknown biological species.

I had an experience with something like this once. Though, unlike most other experiences I hear of, instead of running away I went towards it and tried to flush it out. Which I can understand sounds quite counter intuitive to begin with, yet true. I wasn't exactly a believer anyway and didn't feel fear at the time, only "what the?" and an overwhelming curiosity to get to the bottom of what was going on. Was like an unusual game of hide and seek until it got too dark.

I searched and researched for some years following yet like everyone else, found nothing that would really indicate such a thing exists (exploded a lot of myths around the subject though). We all (well most) have some sort of weird experience that we don't really understand at least one time. That was mine I guess. A practical joke, imagination, misinterpreted something mundane? Seemed real enough, but who knows.

a reply to: Kryties

Very Cool Thread! I believe in these Creatures. My thinking is, Why not?! There are a lot of regions they can roam and survive in I'd think...

Oh, Love Your Avatar! Obviously!! LOL!!!
My Dragons Thread: Here There Be Dragons !
Stop in when Ya can and have a Look around!?
Later, Syx. ...

a reply to: Kryties

here's his website lots of good stuff on it for those interested...
yowie hunter

originally posted by: Kryties
a reply to: BASSPLYR

I vaguely remember reading or watching that interview.

I regularly go outside in the middle of the night to urinate (we're on tankwater here so I try to save water where I can), and several times I have had "that feeling" of something watching me from the darkness - and no I'm not talking about sheep or cows or other farm-related animals. I've even seen my cat come bolting inside several times from outside looking like something had just scared the living bejesus out of him.

Now that I'm talking about it I'm getting more and more tempted to go and price some nightvision equipment lol.

You know what that means? The Yowie has seen your willie... I'd love to toss on some night goggles and watch my back yard out by the woodline. I've heard some W-I-E-R-D creepy stuff out there at night. My neighbor called me one night while her husband was on the road and told me she saw someone cross though the back of my yard and heading towards hers. I grabbed a flashlight and my .357 and went back there but didn't find anything. I wasn't sticking around too long to look for tracks.