The Yowie, Australia's Bigfoot: My initial findings

Hi ATS'ers.

I'm currently writing a feature for the magazine I work for about the Australian Yowie. The focus is on the combination of Aboriginal legend, early colonial stories and modern-day sightings.

I am using these sources and interview material with Aboriginal elders to create a profile of sorts of the 2 reported types of Yowie on the East Coast.

I am considering requesting permission to submit my finished article to ATS, but that is yet to be decided. The reason I am posting this now is to let you all know the huge positive response I have received while writing the article and the attitude the average Australian has towards the possibility of the Yowie's existence.


As I have posted on many years ago, I am myself a witness to a Yowie, and I find the topic fascinating. I told myself before deciding to begin this project that the response to my questions would be met with similar stigma to asking about UFO's or ghosts. I was wrong.

I'd say about 70 - 80% of the people I have spoken to about my project believe in the existence of Yowies. 70 - 80%! To me, those figures are a huge encouragement. We always talk about how the study of cryptozoology is ridiculed among the public, and usually that is the case, but with this subject it doesn't seem to be. I don't know if it something about us Australians that makes us more able to believe myths, or if it is in accepting the Aboriginal heritage around us that we begin to also accept their legends.

I also discovered 2 other witnesses in my own family that had never talked about their experiences. That tells me several things. Firstly, that the number of people that see these creatures are most likely far higher than the number of reports that come in each year. It also tells me that even believers in the creature (both those who say it say they thought it existed beforehand) have trouble accepting what they have seen and are worried that in telling their story they will be ridiculed.

These 2 encounters, both within 50km of each other, were near textbook for a run in with a Yowie. Both of these witnesses, as well as the local Aboriginal Elder, noted the same characteristics in the creature:

* A horrible odour
* Territorial activity (throwing stones or stamping feet to scare trespassers away)
* Eyes that reflect light and sometimes seem to glow like a cat's in the night
* Shaggy brown to black fur covering the entire body.

I also experienced all these factors in my own encounter. The thing that makes me think there is 2 different species, as I mentioned earlier, is the differing reports about the creature's height. The witnesses I have spoken to report the same style of create that I saw, which is about 7 - 8ft tall and as wide as a fridge.

There are, however, regular reports in an area further inland, of Ewok-sized 'hairy men' that are usually seen in groups and have been reported to 'talk' to each other in a strange grunt-based language.

The main difference between the Yowie and the American Bigfoot seems to be the attitude they have to humans. Most Bigfoot reports are sightings of the creature from a distance, and even then the Bigfoot seems intent on getting away.

Many Yowie reports include things like the above mentioned threatening actions such as throwing stones, stomping feet, bellowing or hitting a tree with a log to make noise. These actions are usually enough to scare away any humans that come into contact with the creatures, but from reports of those who have ignored the warnings and pushed on the Yowie can become a dangerous predator.

There are no known reports of deaths in encountering a Yowie, but there have been cases of attacks that have caused minor injuries. Myself and a friend ignored the warnings (we didn't even know where the sound was coming from) and were pursued by the beast for several hundred metres through bushland.

So, after all this speculation, I really can't tell you what the creature is or how it has stayed hidden for so long. I suspect that it is simply another hominid that has survived the eons and learned to adapt to it's surroundings, except unlike it it doesn't build and destroy, it utilizes what it has.

I hope to be able to post my completed research and article, but time will tell. In the mean time, please post any comments. If any of you have had encounters with Yowies / Bigfoot / Sasquatch etc. I'd love to read them!

I haven't read much about the Yowie, but I'm interested to hear more.

Can't wait to see your completed research.

Footprints?
Stools?
Hair?
Remains?
Anything concrete?

Hi,
Could you send me a link to your article when it publishes?, I would be keenly interested in reading it.


I have kinda followed the bigfoot thing for most of my life, but have only heard of the yowie in the last few.


When encountered in a more remote locations and on their own terms rock throwing, stick banging and limb breaking are common behaviors for bigfoot.

In many native american traditions bigfoot has a name that means demon or cannibal.

He's called the "hairy man" in the local tribes language.

Native american pictographs of bigfoot

These are only a few miles from here.

I had my first bf experience when I was 12, in oregon.

An uncle had bought property near the little deschuttes river(? spelling)
I spent most of my 2 weeks there roaming the forest alone hunting and fishing. I had grown up outdoors so I wasnt scared to be out by myself, but when ever I was by the river i felt as though someone was watching me. On occasion I would hear something large moving through the brush and thought that it was deer or elk, even though I never saw any.
At times I would hear thing as though they were falling to the ground, I chalked it up to squirrels dropping pine cones.
Then one night after all us kids had gone to bed in the big kids tent, when we heard the most frightening howl from the forest. It went on for about a minute. It woke up the adults in the trailer and they came out to see what it was.
it still sends chills down my spine to this day, at the time my uncle, who was a very skilled outdoorsman, assured us it was just a screech owl.
I bought it hook line and sinker and didnt give it anymore thought, although it scared a couple of the other kids so bad they made their parents leave early.
Until 30 some years later when I happend across a recording of a supposed bigfoot call, and it was very similar too what I heard.

And at times while camping with the family in the local central cal mtns, I would find tufts of reddish hair caught it the brush, my dad would tell me it was cattle or dear, but know as an adult dear or cattle dont have hair like that.
And there were times when you could hear a large animal moving around the camp at night.
Could be bears, but no food was ever gotten into even though it was left out on the table all day long.
mountain lions could be, and likely but sometimes you could hear it thrashing through the woods.
And on other occasions it was like someone was throwing rocks at me, but since I was the only person for miles, it figured it was squirrels again.

The same uncle that had the property in oregon knew a family that had homesteaded here in the mountains in the 1880's. In fact we camped at a site just a short walk from their original log cabin.
Any way some of the local lore found its way into my childhood, including the cautionary tale that I should be back in camp before dark so the "cant remember indian name" wouldnt get me.
this is in fact a local native american tale about the hairy man.

Recently in the same area while a buddy and I were riding the motos, we saw a set a barefoot prints CROSSING the trail.
They werent overly big but very out of place where we found them as they werent going down the trail but across it.

Another time near lake tahoe, again while in the middle of nowhere cutting x-country I found a scat(stool pile) on a rock.
Im pretty familiar with the scat of all most all of the local large animals, but this wasnt any of them.
It honestly looked like a human pile, but filled with berries and leafy matter.
As I look back on it I should have taken a sample.

Ive got one other experience;




















[edit on 21-9-2008 by punkinworks]

Most of my life I have been fairly skeptical that a large primate could live in north america and not be discovered.
The anecdotal evidence I found to be interesting but, not conclusive to me, until I had my own sighting.
But not, an actual visual sighting, dammit.
Me and several buddies were doing a very grueling 65 mile mountain bike ride on one of the toughest 4WD trails in the sierra.
We got a very early start around 6 am for the 20 mile climb up to the highest point. We were about 6 miles into the wilderness climbing up a fairly steep dirt road. 2 of my friends were about 5 minutes ahead of me and paul. As we climbed we laid down the first tracks of the day, over the top of deer and bear from the night before.
While the road went along a small draw that was thick with manzanita, and buck brush and a grove of fir and pine trees. Paul had gotten about 30 seconds ahead of me, just far enough to go out of site at each corner.
He had just gone around a bend when I heard a pretty heavy thrashing in the brush, moving down the draw.
When I came around the next bend, Paul is off his bike standing in the road looking down. I though he had lost something off of his bike and was looking for it.
Then he looked up at me with a really wierd look on his face pointing at the ground, and said to me" Dude, you got to see this".

When I get there, there is a track several strides long, in the fine silty soil of the road, of footprints 14-15 inches long, on top of the tracks from my friends ahead of us.
They came off of a rocky knoll, went down the jeep trail for a few yards,
it stopped and shuffled around a couple of times, went across the road and down into the draw I had just heard noises coming from.
The fine soils, preserved so much detail that it was amazing, you could see the lines and wrinkles on the toes and on the bottom of the foot.
It was somewhat flat footed, with the toes being very splayed, with big gaps in the toes.
We stood there for several minutes, trying to decide what to do, we had no camera, its about 8:30 am were at 8500' 35 miles from the nearest town, which has an ace hardware, PLASTER. So we decide that we'll try to catch our friends, then the fastest two of us will ride down to the car and run into town get a disposable camera and try to get some plaster.
As the road switch backed up the mountain we came across the track again 2 more times as we climbed. From the third set of tracks we could see that it was headed straight down the hill, because we could see the lower portions of the road.
We knew there was a spot up ahead where our buddies would likely stop, and just before we got there we found another set of tracks, as we stopped and looked at this track, almost in disbelief, a jeep with three guys bear hunting came up, and asked us what we were looking at, to which paul , not wanting to say bigfoot, replied" A big bare footprint", they got all excited because they thought he said, "A big bear footprint"
and hopped out of the jeep to have a look, as one of them looked down at the track, he looked at me and said "That aint no bear foot print", to which I nodded.

They stood silently as we told them about the rest of the tracks headed down the hill, after a couple of minutes they went over to the jeep and talked amongst themselves for a little bit. We walked over and told them we going into town to get a camera and try and find some plaster.
Then they told us the only reason the were driving around that early on the trail was that there were 200 jeeps on a poker run behind them, and that they were trying to get away from them. They said the first jeeps should be here in about an hr.
CR$%.
that shot our idea, there was no way we could stop that train of jeeps, or have them go around any of the prints.

I asked the hunters what they were going to do, two of them just shrugged and the third mummbled that he didnt see nothin, he looked somewhat shaken by the event.
Me and paul decided that we would still try to catch the other guys, and we could turn around go back down the hill to try and show them the first set of prints, which might not be damaged yet.
Well unbeknownst to us the other guys had gone off on a flier and there was no way we were going to catch them.
We rode our asses off trying to catch them but we got to the point of no return, the top and we stil hadnt caught them, so we gave up and resigned it to a personal experience, and we jokingly told ourselves it was just some size 25 hillbilly walking around bare foot on 6 miles up a 4wd trail on a 35 degree morning, and we continued on. Our friends never noticed the tracks because they were to busy racing each other.
I had almost forgotten about the experience, until I found the BFRO website, by accident. I was actually looking for something else and went to their site.
I thought it was kinda cool, and noticed that they had sighting reports broken down into regions and counties, so just for fun I clicked on my county, not really expecting to find anything. But there were many reports going back for 50 years. Then I noticed a report in the same area, around the same time we had our experience. Then I noticed that most of the sightings are within a 5 mile radius of a set of small lakes.
hmmmm





[edit on 21-9-2008 by punkinworks]

reply to post by ChChKiwi


Physical evidence of the Yowie does exist, the same as Bigfoot, in the form of markings, prints, the occasional photograph etc.

The best of these have been taken and discovered by the team at Australian Yowie Research, run by Dean Harrison.

I've met him personally and he is a great guy. I personally believe that if anyone finally proves the existance of the Yowie it will be his team.

Check their expedition reports on their page HERE and you'll find some of the aforementioned evidence.

reply to post by punkinworks


Thanks for your posts!

Great accounts. I'm saving like a mad man at the moment trying to get up enough cash to come back to America to do an 'urban legends' tour of sorts. I want to hit some of the UFO hotspots, do some hiking in areas that have a high Bigfoot-sighting rate and visit some of the supposed sites of 'lake monsters'.

Should be fun

reply to post by fooffstarr


right on, that will be quite a tour

Enjoy your visit when you get to come.

I am an Aboriginal Australian, and I have heard stories about the little yowies, but they were called "hairy Beckers" They were also said to be very aggresive - I remember a story about police on horseback trying to get them, but the hairy beckers took down a a horse and it's rider and didn't leave much.

I would like to share a story of an experiance I had when I was a teenage more the 10 years ago now. Just the thought of the experiance still sends chills up my spine and through my body.

My home while as a child was on a remote mountainous property apart of the new england national park in nothern new south wales. I spent more then 10 years living here. My Parents still live on this property.

The story goes. I used to ride my fathers trail bike around this property usually at a fast pace for thrill seeking purposes. This property is full of old fire roads through thick remote bush land. So one day riding around I decided to go down a track that I very rarelly visited, as there was allways a strange feeling in this particular area of the property. Others that lived around there had also felt this. Anyway, riding down this old over grown track, my dog racing along beside me, as he always did. I stoped, a feeling of dread and horror came over me! my hairs standing on end. As the road was narrow and on the side of mountain, my reaction was to jump of my bike and start turning it around. By this point my dog had fled the area, nowhwere to be seen. As I jumped back on my bike, I heard (Approx 5m off) very large heavy foot steps coming down the hill towards me through the long grass. (Bascially sounded like a large Human footsteps, the image of Yowie entered my mind) So petrafied by this point I could not look back and I hit the throttle hard. Half way back down the hill I found my dog heading for home and I did the same. When I got back to the house my mum said I Looked like I saw a ghost, hair still standing on end. Needless to say I did not go riding again for along time.

She still remembers to this day, how scared I was and says she has had similar experiance of feelings that something is watching. Others that had lived there also had similar stories of feelings that there was somthing watching in that area.

There are also aboriginal stories of the hairy man living along that mountain range, the area was avoided by the aboriginal tribes before the settlers and was a place they sent there people as punishment.

It should be mentioned that I know the sounds of the bush. There are wallabys around the area and I have seen and know the sound they make when bounding. They always run away not towards. This experiance was unlike any sound I have ever heard.

I have had many other experiances of something watching from the surrounding landscape on many occassions. Still to this day whenever I return I have the feeling that this thing! things are watching. My mother has has the attitude of im not bothering it so it doesnt bother me and my dad wont say anything and chooses to ignore it.

The thought of that experiance still freaks me out. What ever it was, was unknown to me and I still have trouble passing through that area.

Anyways, I hope this valid, just thought Id share my story. Im open to any suggestions.

Ps. Sorry for the terrible grammer.

reply to post by fooffstarr


what magazine is it?

should be an interesting read, good luck with it.

reply to post by iced_blue


The magazine has sadly gone out of print, but I published the article here on ATS when it was done.

Click the link in my signature

I would like to share a story of an experiance I had when I was a teenage more the 10 years ago now. Just the thought of the experiance still sends chills up my spine and through my body.

My home while as a child was on a remote mountainous property apart of the new england national park in nothern new south wales. I spent more then 10 years living here. My Parents still live on this property.

The story goes. I used to ride my fathers trail bike around this property usually at a fast pace for thrill seeking purposes. This property is full of old fire roads through thick remote bush land. So one day riding around I decided to go down a track that I very rarelly visited, as there was allways a strange feeling in this particular area of the property. Others that lived around there had also felt this. Anyway, riding down this old over grown track, my dog racing along beside me, as he always did. I stoped, a feeling of dread and horror came over me! my hairs standing on end. As the road was narrow and on the side of mountain, my reaction was to jump of my bike and start turning it around. By this point my dog had fled the area, nowhwere to be seen. As I jumped back on my bike, I heard (Approx 5m off) very large heavy foot steps coming down the hill towards me through the long grass. (Bascially sounded like a large Human footsteps, the image of Yowie entered my mind) So petrafied by this point I could not look back and I hit the throttle hard. Half way back down the hill I found my dog heading for home and I did the same. When I got back to the house my mum said I Looked like I saw a ghost, hair still standing on end. Needless to say I did not go riding again for along time.

She still remembers to this day, how scared I was and says she has had similar experiance of feelings that something is watching. Others that had lived there also had similar stories of feelings that there was somthing watching in that area.

There are also aboriginal stories of the hairy man living along that mountain range, the area was avoided by the aboriginal tribes before the settlers and was a place they sent there people as punishment.

It should be mentioned that I know the sounds of the bush. There are wallabys around the area and I have seen and know the sound they make when bounding. They always run away not towards. This experiance was unlike any sound I have ever heard.

I have had many other experiances of something watching from the surrounding landscape on many occassions. Still to this day whenever I return I have the feeling that this thing! things are watching. My mother has has the attitude of im not bothering it so it doesnt bother me and my dad wont say anything and chooses to ignore it.

The thought of that experiance still freaks me out. What ever it was, was unknown to me and I still have trouble passing through that area.

Anyways, I hope this valid, just thought Id share my story. Im open to any suggestions.

Ps. Sorry for the terrible grammer.