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Panic: A Genuine Example In The Old Sense Of The Word?

Saying about predators and panic, several years ago as a student I was carrying out some fieldwork at a quarry in Rutland. It was a huge site and I was working in the abandonned part. It was on a raised bit of hillside with a 'road' leading up in and multiple wide 'ledges' that were being allowed to go wild. It was still mostly bare rock but there were small ponds and hardy plants growing in places. Above was the tree line planted to shield the quarry from view.

I was completely alone in that place; I'd arrive in the morning, get driven up there by the quarry manager and be left to my own devices until late afternoon. You could see vehicles being driven off in the distance, but aside from that there was nobody around at all.

So I'm there taking measurements and things when suddenly I had the distinct impression I was being watched. I stood up and looked around, but couldn't see anybody. I put it down to my imagination but the sensation got heavier and heavier. I was starting to get really afraid, thinking I was in danger, but looking round there was literally nothing and nobody. The sensation vanished as soon as it had started, and although I was shaken I carried on with my work.

Then a few years later, in the very pages of FT itself, I read that the quarry I'd been in has a resident ABC that's often seen! Which left me wondering, that sensation I had of being watched...was I being stalked by the ABC? :shock:

I think being the first person to be mauled by an ABC would be worthy of a mention in the mag!
 
I saw a TV documentary about fifteen years ago which featured a woman who claimed to have been mauled by an ABC, so you might have been the second!
 
Urvogel said:
Then a few years later, in the very pages of FT itself, I read that the quarry I'd been in has a resident ABC that's often seen! Which left me wondering, that sensation I had of being watched...was I being stalked by the ABC? :shock:

Well, likely you were being watched by something. If you read some of the US wilderness stories, you will find that other animals going quiet when a large predator is about is very common. I'd say that at some level we humans can still pick up on whatever senses - I would guess smell, maybe hearing - at a subconscious level - that cause those other animals to go quiet, and that leads to the feeling.
 
I remembered another story about a place that's inspired fear/panic over the years, near the town I used to live in. It's also a haunted bridge story, which is probably another thing all on its own. It's too long and involved (and probably tedious) to post on the board, I think, so I'll just leave a link in case anyone wants to read it.

http://victoriaphantasmagoria.blogspot. ... ollow.html
 
I think this thread is interesting as a panic attack - many years ago now - is the only genuinely "odd" experience I've ever had. I was 13, it was a hot, still summer day and it was the school holidays. I lived near Highdown Hill in West Sussex and as I had nothing better to do I decided to walk up the hill and enjoy the (impressive) view from the top. Nowadays you can drive a car halfway up the hillside but then the main access was more of a footpath, a rough track up the Southern slope. I started up this path and after a few hundred yards I started to feel uneasy. There was nobody about, no noise of any sort and I remember the hillside seemed to be slumbering in the heat of the day.

Midway on this path was a cross ditch, quite possibly ancient as Highdown Hill has a hill fort on top and a number of other dykes and ditches of great antiquity. By this ditch a large Yew tree overhung the track and you had to pass under it to reach the open down land that then led up to the fort. I suddenly "knew" that something terrifying was lurking near that Yew tree. I recall trying to dismiss this feeling and making myself carry on. After all, I'd walked up the hill many times before and even at that age the whole thing struck me as completely irrational. But a sense of total dread grew, I walked slower and slower and eventually, about 500 yards from the tree, I stopped, overcome by a fear I've never experienced again in my life. I recall trying to force myself to carry on but suddenly I found myself running down the hill as fast as I could, falling twice on the way, and eventually finding myself back at the start of the path feeling more than a little stupid.

Essentially, that's it. All this took place more than 50 years ago and of course I've been up the Hill since - though I've never taken that path again and wouldn't do so even now. But I've never forgotten the irrational and overwhelming terror I felt on this occasion and still wonder what on earth was going on.
 
Thank you for that story, Speckles; well-told and atmospheric!
I am fascinated by these panic threads. This does seem to match the others, and it's very interesting to speculate on the cause.
 
There are areas in Australia which are known to have the old spirits as residents, in fact the place names are quite often of those, or that particular fellow.
We have a female spirit in gulleys and ravines (Balyet)which is known to steal children away. Her presence is indicated by early morning mist.
We have Quinkins here, two types, one is shy, tall and very slender and lives and travels through rock. The other fellow is short, stout, has a head like a ping pong bat and has hugh genitals - He's known as a 'cheeky Fella' and its best not to have anything to do with him.
We have Potkooroks who live in treetops and have a propensity to throw gumnuts and twigs at anyone who walks under 'their' tree.
We have Narguns that are very very old and are the size of mountains and have a filthy disposition to anything that breathes. These fellows move at night, preferably moonless nights, and crush anything that breathes.
We have the Turong, little ones who live in water, These are the ones where young ladies who want to become pregnant, seek them out. It's best, if you're a bloke, when coming across a creek or a water hole to throw a small pebble in before you touch the water.
This very small list, of a broad panoply of spirits, has been acknowledged and affirmed by the Old People for tens of thousands of years in this country, and in consequence their presence can be felt in certain areas and some natural features.
I have been out bush (I fossick for gold and gems - sapphires and emeralds) and have come across areas that have welcomed me with open arms, conversely, I've come across other areas where I KNOW I must turn around and get the hell away and never come back.
I was up in a place called the Barrington tops on the Great Dividing Range, staying in a disused rangers hut with mates. The buck koalas where extremely vocal that night, growling and hooting very loudly and I went outside to have a pee. It was a moonless night and the wind was up, thrashing through the tops of the trees - on closing the door behind me and commencing the operation of having a pee I knew that I was not alone - nothing visual at all, just a dreaded awareness of something hugh and malign, to the extent that I stopped halfway and couldn't get back into that brightly lit rangers hut quick enough. I mentioned it on return to the hut of, my experience, and blokes being blokes they trooped out and experienced exactly the sense and feeling that we were not welcome out there that I had. In the morning, with the sound of native birds echoing though the gullies, the presence was no longer there - one of many strange experiences that is part of the Australian bush.
Another situation was out on a very old part of Australia where there had been occupation by the Old Ones for 40 thousand years. I'd got to know the Rangers by chatting and yarning over this and that, and they had promised to take me out into the sand hills to show me a skeleton that had been unearthing out of the soil there due to eaolian forces. it was only 6 or 7 kilometres away from where we were staying and it was a bright sunny cloudless day when we left. We drove the short distance, then commenced to walk in to the site through the sand hills, a distance of a kilometre or so. By the time we'd reached the general area it had clouded over, quite darkly, and the wind had picked up a bit. We were about to reach the site when there was a hugh thunder clap that had us checking each other to see if we were all there, and we looked up to see the biggest Western Red (kangaroo) we'd ever seen, bathed in a brilliant but confined ray of sunlight, just standing there, looking at us. One of the Rangers (Koori Fellas) said that that was as far as he was going - Needless to say, we all agreed with Him - (back at the camp site He reckoned that the Roo was the guardian spirit, which to me made lot of sense, the reason being, that Roo should have been halfway to Bourke after that clap of thunder, but He just stood there guarding the Old Fellas spot).
I reckon, some places accrue a malevolence, through some process or other, either through the reinforcement of myth by humans, over great periods of time, or, because there IS a negative energy inherent in that area. We have Massacre sites in this country due to the Pastoral Companies and others, that wanted the Aboriginal off his land - to this day there is a strange feeling there - that is obvious to many people.
This sort'ff makes sense to me, so I I'll keep this theory to myself.
 
Thanks for your input, mungomanII, but might I suggest you use line spaces to separate paragraphs - it makes a big block of text much easier to read on screen. :cool:
 
Yup, I break my posts down into paragraphs of two or three lines.

It might stop the message's flow a little but it's easier to read. Especially for those with older eyes. o_O
 
Great spooky stories, and it's interesting to hear an Australian take on the subject of Panic. It certainly sounds like the Bush has a lot of spirits, friendly and less so, guarding it!
 
This Simulacra is called The Watcher; He resides in South Australia and is responsible for that particular area. The first photo is general of the area, the second, a close up.

The third, around The Goulburn area is, The Mother and Child.

I can imagine that these land forms were easy to identify as such, whether that land form looks like a face, an animal, or an action of one of the Oldest Ones and over time, has become part of the mythology of the area. When these are altered by earthquake or just natural erosion, the myth alters and other aspects of the supernatural forces comes into play, therefore verifying another menber of Kunyapipi (the dreaming), who's nature and behaviour might be considered malevolent, producing areas that would be considered 'Tapu'. This is all conjecture on my part.

Whether it is the prolonged thought by humanity, of an area becoming 'Tapu' over a very lengthy time, or there is a 'bad' feeling associated with the area, which creates an atmosphere -who knows - I surely don't...I just know that some areas give me the screaming abdabs if I stay too long in them.

IMG_6445.jpg
IMG_6445_edited-2.jpg
IMG_7732_edited-1.jpg
 
Great photos!

But what I first took to be the head of the Mother seems on closer inspection to be in another field.

Is that Dad, looking over the hedge? o_O
 
I love simulacra! There was a famous north american one that fell to bits fairly recently.....
 
G'day rynner2, Mum's head is firmly attached. Dad, I think is the one reclining in the background, wearing the jousting helmet...
IMG_7745_edited-1.jpg
 
Thanks Peripart. Yes, the bush does have it's fair share of 'cheeky fellas' as the Old People call'em. I think some of them were to keep the kids in line though...A bit like the Bogey Man that we had up around Newcastle when I was a bairn - He was always going to 'get' us if we were out after dark.
 
I regularly visit my mum. I get the train from Lancaster to Preston and then cycle about 5 miles to her house. Part of the journey is down a completely unlit old tramline with no houses, only fields on either side. I hate cycling it in the dark as I have a real fear that someone is going to have tied fishing wire across the path, tied to trees. I really fear that its going to take my head off!

I know it sounds strange but I guess the mind can do strange things when, like the previous poster, you are in pitch black and alone, or in a deserted kind of place.
Some horrible scrotes tied fishing wire across a path near our house when I was about 5. I was running slightly ahead of my mum, who was pushing my baby sister in the buggy, saw it and shouted back to my mum. Good job I did as she was concentrating on the buggy and could have been seriously hurt.
 
Mungoman, are those photos of the coast near Victor Harbour / Pt Elliot or Kangaroo Island (Karta) in SA? Could be anywhere between Ceduna and Malacoota really.

Two anecdotes here from white Australians with an appreciation of the first Australians' heritage and spirituality. The first is from Adelaide artist Ainslie Roberts, who depicted Aboriginal Dreaming myths through paintings (circa 1960-90). This panic attack took place while camping at Kata Tjuta (also known in English as The Olgas) at night in 1960. This recount from his biographer:
Ainslie had already finished a number of oil paintings, and one day Riebe asked if he had ever made a painting by moonlight. 'You should try it,' he said. 'It's a full moon tonight.' Ainslie became intrigued with the suggestion, and when the moon was up he made his way alone to a ridge in the Valley of the Winds.
The valley floor is green with trees: one way, it flows out onto the plain; the other, it turns back to the pass with its massive stone walls. Ainslie found a ledge of rock with an escarpment face high up against it, as if a road had been broken into the side of the hill. It was a still night, perfect for painting. He had been working for about an hour when, all at once, he began to have an eerie feeling that he was not alone - a feeling so strong that that the hairs rose on the back of his neck. Trying to ignore it, he worked on for another fifteen minutes, but that was enough. He put down his palette, lit a cigarette, and walked back towards the pass.
It was as if he had suddenly crossed an invisible barrier: the feeling of threat was no longer there. He leaned against an outcrop of rock wondering what was happening. 'A lot of nonsense,' he decided. 'It must be my imagination!' He finished the cigarette, strolled back to his easel, and began painting again.
The sense of angry presence returned almost at once, intense and intimidating. He had never felt anything like it.
At the end of ten minutes he was close to panic. 'It was unbearable,' he recalled. 'I simply couldn't stay there any longer. My only thought was to get back to camp and some human company as soon as possible. I had stumbled into something I did not understand, and I wanted to get away from it.' He left everything where it was, and ran.
He blundered down the hill, crashing through bushes and across a small creek, tripping and scratching himself in his frantic passage. By the time he neared the camp, some 800 metres away, he had begun to feel calmer; he sauntered the last few metres nonchalantly, as if nothing had happened. But something had happened, and he slept restlessly.

The next morning he wanted to share the experience with someone. Mountford (Charles - Ainslie's guide and friend - a famous Australian anthropologist who studied the central desert clans from the 1930s) was too detached; Ainslie needed intuitive sympathy, and he chose Bill Harney (Uluru ranger and one of the few white people the local Aboriginal clans trusted to share secret/sacred knowledge with during those years) Taking the ranger aside he told him what had happened.
'Did Bill bring me back to earth! He didn't even try to argue that it was the camp food, or that it had not happened at all. "You were in a sacred place at the wrong time," he said. "You weren't wanted, Ainslie, and they let you you know, that's all. "et's walk back and get your gear."
When they arrived Ainslie began packing his collapsible easel, but when he came to look for the palette, it had vanished. There had been no wind during the night. No-one had left the camp. No-one else was within miles of them. They searched with increasing puzzlement, until suddenly Harney called: 'Over here, Ainslie. I've found it.'
The palette lay about twelve metres up the slope, above the escarpment wall, plastered face down on the rock, as if it had been hurled there by a giant hand. 'How the hell did that happen?' Ainslie wondered as he picked it up and looked at the stains of paint on the rockface. 'I don't know,' said Harney, 'but its there, isn't it. Come on. Let's go mate
.
Ainslie never told Mountford about the experience. 'He was a scientific man. He wasn't comfortable with that sort of thing. Nothing of the sort ever happened to me again, but it was a real experience and I never forgot it.'

From Ainslie Roberts and the Dreamtime by Charles Hulley, pp75-77

I have tried in vain to find an online image of the painting inspired by this experience, but here's a poor quality photo I took from the book cited above (p72).
SDC10968.jpg

The Spirit Dingo of Ayers Rock (1967)


The second is from singer Neil Murray, who lived out at Papunya NT in the early 80s and founded the legendary Warumpi Band. The location was a newly established Pintupi outstation west of Kintore by the NT/WA border where Neil was teaching around 1981. This is the same place near where the last of the nomadic Mandildjara were gathered in just a few short years earlier:
My campfire was just a couple of glowing embers and the night was flooded with moonlight as the moon cleared the mountain. The gentle swish of leaves of the tree at my head and the creak and groan of the windmill nearby indicated a steady breeze had set in. I arranged my canvas tarp into a rough windbreak supported by a shovel propped against the tree. Remembering the kutatji warnings, I gave special attention to placing my loaded rifle within easy reach.
How many times had I heard people talk about kutatji? I had yet to work out whether kutatji were spirits or real men out to kill someone or both. But all the Aboriginal people I'd spoken to insisted on their existence. They said sometimes they may be dressed up flash in cowboy gear or look like any man waving you down at night along the road. They may arrive at your camp and ask for meat. It's allright to give them meat. But if they ask you where somebody is - always say that you don't know - because that is the person they are looking to kill. Sketchy details, but that is what I'd been told so far.
I remembered some nights at Beantree when the camp dogs would suddenly all charge off in the same direction barking into the darkness. People would simply accept that there must have been a kutatji lurking around.
With a final glance towards the moonlit clearing I crawled into my swag. Things seemed calm enough and I soon dropped off to sleep.
I was wrenched from the depths, hauled to the surface, by a roaring howl of wind, the shovel handle landing on my head and the canvas flapping wildly. Flailing my arms for an instant in terror, I grabbed the rifle, panting for my eyes to see in the darkness, the moonlit flat coming into focus.
The wind had died to a breeze. I shifted my swag quickly to the other side of the tree, still holding my rifle, and scanned the scrub for movement. Nothing. The mountain rearing above the flat was clear, the leaves of the tree had returned to their gently lofting.
As I calmed down, I was struck with the familiarity of finding myself in a moonlit landscape with cold moments of terror tinged with humorous dread. I laughed. You will insist on camping alone in the wilderness! Aboriginal people never camp alone - you're a mad whitefella! ... on my own, not all nights were that enjoyable or peaceful. Sometimes, I'd put the wind up myself - an odd bird call I couldn't place or my horse snorting at something in the dark I couldn't see and I would feel the terror begin to creep. And now ... I couldn't return to sleep.
I didn't feel alone anymore. It was me and it, alone in the wilderness. For hours the moon hung there in the sky while the wind blew clouds across its face. I watched the flat as if expecting to see something. I sailed on the swag with the ground sheet flapping in the periodic gusts. I tried to keep the sides of the canvas weighted down with boots and gear. Still the moon hung out cold and hard with its light flooding the clearing while I anticipated all kinds of figures - giants or bushmen with spears emerging from the tree line to make their move.
I found another rock for my swag wrap to keep the sails tight and waited. I stuck it out a good while, but whatever I imagined did not materialise. It stayed behind the tree line, refusing to come out. I never got a glimpse for sure. Finally I nodded off. The (school) kids found me like that in the morning, holding my rifle.
"Walpangku [it was the wind]," I said when I explained how the shovel handle hit me on the head and woke me up. But they knew otherwise. I'd confirmed their suspicions. I'd been visited by a mischievous kutatji. They told me to sleep much closer to their camp.


From Sing for Me, Countryman, by Neil Murray, pp87-88
 
G'day Skinny, good guess - Victor Harbour mate, on Granite Island - The Watcher.

Mother and Child is up near the Pejar Dam, twenty K's from Goulburn up on the Southern Tablelands of NSW, a beautiful spot to live in, but can get a bit cold in winter (last winter we got down to minus eleven, with winds up to seventy K's an hour , so wind chill would've dropped it down to about minus fifteen celsius). Yeah, those descriptions By the balanda are spot on, and mirror the feelings I had to a tee, I just wanted to get out of there anyway I could, so Ainslie's description of his bolt from his night painting perch does not seem out of the ordinary to me, even the attempted cool on entering the camp.

There's a spot up near Newcastle called Ghosties beach just south from Catherine Hill Bay, which has a cave there at low tide that you could walk through. I always felt a presence there of this big Old Fella, with his hair tied back in a clump on the back of his head, desert style, and he seemed narky about my presence the first time, so I rolled up a smoke and left it on the ledge, about two metres up, at the mouth of the cave. I never had the scary feeling after that, and any time I was down that way I'd leave a durrie for him.

The beach and the littoral area around Ghosties is covered in Aboriginal artifacts and middens - to walk through it, you can picture a hive of activity in you minds eye, cooking fires just above the high water mark, hugh cart rut wheel shells bigger than a closed fist, Turban shells that the Old Ones used to make their fish hooks from, and further back, the mens camps with lots of debitage and stone cores, showing the young boys how and what is done for tool making - a beautiful spot that's now been taken over by a coal company that prohibits anybody from getting to the beach)

I see you're from S.A. Skinny, I spent eight years or so living down in Aldinga from the early seventies when it was all wheat paddocks with the Pub at the point and Hectors post office down on the beach.

Sellicks Beach is pretty well noted for it's Aboriginal relics, dated back twenty five thousand years, by Archaeologists, and noted for it's Kartan stone industry (bloody big stone tools). if you stand on the beach and look at the hills, in the minds eye it resembles sleeping bodies that are gigantic in form, and would have been all part of the Kunyapipi (dreaming) myth.

It's a stunning Country, and it's covered with a thin veneer of this modern day australia,yet get of the bitumen and you can see the Old Fella still in that land. Tough old buggers.
 
The Australian stories are intriguing (and frightening!) They definitely have a different "flavor" than stories from other parts of the world.

Concidentally, tonight I saw a program on Ularu (speling?). Pictures of that place have always spooked me. It looks like a place that does not necessarily like or want humans around it. Beautiful, but forbidding.

I'm reminded of the time I went to the top of Mount Washington in New Hampshire (US) and had a feeling that I shouldn't be there, that the mountain didn't like visitors and I couldn't wait to get out of there. Found out later that the native tribes there had considered it the home of the great spirit and duly avoided it out of respect. And it's not that I don't like mountains as a rule - the Rockies in Colorado seemed perfectly nice and "friendly" in comparison. So, is it just anthromorphizing a place, or is it something else? I don't know, but the stories make you think.
 
G'day Ulalume. Uluru and KataJuta (Skinny spoke about it) are considered to be the Primary Dreaming spots for the Desert people of Central Australia. It is an extremely harsh environment for humanity, and it's lessons come with an extreme punishment if you take things for granted. As such, it's mythology is rich, involving everything from the ant, it's trees and the stars (the Old People knew the true number of the Pleiades star system ( the Seven sisters) well before Newtonian mechanics revealed it to the rest of the world) and The Old Ones mirrored a cosmogenesis very similar to early Babylonian religions.

The Father of all is Biame, His Son, the law bringer is daramalan and the Mother saved humanity when the Earth was flooded.

In being aware of these curious connections on other continents, my own personal views concerning not Atlantis, but an Atlantean age thoughout our world, a long time ago, is not just personified with megalithic buildings in every continent but by having a shared communication of sorts with every continent.

A Science of medicine, natural science, awareness of the nights skies and what it could portend is common in some of the most archaic groups of people on this planet (consider the Dogon People and it's connections with the Sirius group), the point, to me , is why is it so common. I use an Occams razor perspective that helps me make a lot of sense for my own personal perspective of this world of ours.

Maybe there should be areas on this planet that puts the fear of the Gods into us, while there needs to be other areas that make us feel sublime and close to that Grand Mystery - It sort'ff makes sense - to me...
 
G'day Skinny, good guess - Victor Harbour mate, on Granite Island - The Watcher.

Mother and Child is up near the Pejar Dam, twenty K's from Goulburn up on the Southern Tablelands of NSW, a beautiful spot to live in, but can get a bit cold in winter (last winter we got down to minus eleven, with winds up to seventy K's an hour , so wind chill would've dropped it down to about minus fifteen celsius). Yeah, those descriptions By the balanda are spot on, and mirror the feelings I had to a tee, I just wanted to get out of there anyway I could, so Ainslie's description of his bolt from his night painting perch does not seem out of the ordinary to me, even the attempted cool on entering the camp.

There's a spot up near Newcastle called Ghosties beach just south from Catherine Hill Bay, which has a cave there at low tide that you could walk through. I always felt a presence there of this big Old Fella, with his hair tied back in a clump on the back of his head, desert style, and he seemed narky about my presence the first time, so I rolled up a smoke and left it on the ledge, about two metres up, at the mouth of the cave. I never had the scary feeling after that, and any time I was down that way I'd leave a durrie for him.

The beach and the littoral area around Ghosties is covered in Aboriginal artifacts and middens - to walk through it, you can picture a hive of activity in you minds eye, cooking fires just above the high water mark, hugh cart rut wheel shells bigger than a closed fist, Turban shells that the Old Ones used to make their fish hooks from, and further back, the mens camps with lots of debitage and stone cores, showing the young boys how and what is done for tool making - a beautiful spot that's now been taken over by a coal company that prohibits anybody from getting to the beach)

I see you're from S.A. Skinny, I spent eight years or so living down in Aldinga from the early seventies when it was all wheat paddocks with the Pub at the point and Hectors post office down on the beach.

Sellicks Beach is pretty well noted for it's Aboriginal relics, dated back twenty five thousand years, by Archaeologists, and noted for it's Kartan stone industry (bloody big stone tools). if you stand on the beach and look at the hills, in the minds eye it resembles sleeping bodies that are gigantic in form, and would have been all part of the Kunyapipi (dreaming) myth.

It's a stunning Country, and it's covered with a thin veneer of this modern day australia,yet get of the bitumen and you can see the Old Fella still in that land. Tough old buggers.
G'day, Mungoman. My parents live at Seaford uphill from the old Moana site. I studied Aboriginal Archaeology a bit during my uni days and it isn't hard to spot the material culture the Kaurna left behind down there. Their descendents are still there, and I was lucky enough to work with some of them on an Indigenous uni entry program a few years ago. I am constantly drawn back to the desert each year. It never gets dull. The landscape as a venerated space remains just that for me. My heartland is the central Flinders Ranges. I was born south of there at Burra but have family all through the region from Hamley Bridge in the mid-North to Quorn, but mostly from Pt Pirie where our people were fishers.

The south coast of Adelaide area is literally lined with Kaurna and Ramindjeri Tjilbruki heritage sites, even in there among the coastal metropolitan suburbs, that the gubbas don't recognise. Those hills south of Sellicks are the oldest on Earth and always remind me of headless Sphinx, their massive paws clutching the shore.
 
I recall an article a long time ago in FT on Uluru. Lots of anecdotes of strange happenings there that I found quite unnerving. Tourists should perhaps respect local beliefs and not clamber all over it.
 
G'day Skinny I used to go fishing in the Onkaparinga there at Moana, and I believe that there's a bit of gold in the old river. Good times, cricket on the radio, fish on the bite, and a Southwark sandwich in hand.

There were quite a few spots around Adelaide where people walked on Pre-history without knowing it - my favourite was Mount Alba - an old post glacial area, just past Yankallila (I managed Dairies down that way) but I never got into the academic side till a couple of decades later (studied arachaeology and paleo-anthropology at New England, Armidale).

While there, I realised that the Old People taught me more about themselves, in a more vibrant way than any lecturer ever could. Mulvaney was an interesting fellow, with his beliefs about there being at least three waves of migration to Australia over 150,000 years, with a surreptitious hint that Australia was a primary point for humanity, rather than a secondary one. His theory was that the original Aborigine was the Tasmanian Aborigine (Negrito) rather than the Archaic Caucasoids that partly inhabited the mainland, at a later date .

I must admit adhereing to the multi point origins of Humanity, rather than we all came out of Africa - but, as with all things - It's all theory, some more confirmed than others.

P.S. I recognise your headless sphinx'.
 
I agree Spudrick, just imagine if us colonials wanted to climb all over Canterbury Cathedral. On a happier note, people wanting to climb over Uluru have been greatly reduced, with people being discouraged from doing so.
 
I want to share this minor-ish Fortean event what happened to me & an ex a number of years ago. I was reminded of this event after reading (sometime ago) the 'panic for no reason thread' somewhere on these boards.

We'd been to a family get-together, all was happy - Both of us in a good mood. I may have had a drink, she had not because she was driving.

About 10 pm or so on the road back to our house, some journey of maybe 10 miles the ex suddenly started to go into a tremendous panic.

Some background - I had been with her quite a long time & never once saw her have a prior panic attack in the classical medical sense & she was an experienced driver. Hardly any other traffic on the road & quite a rural setting.

As she is starting to almost hyper-ventilate whilst shouting stuff like 'I have to pull over' I am at the same time trying to calm her down & seriously considering (although it would have been quite possibly disastrous) grabbing hold of the steering wheel. Seeing somebody in that state whilst driving is somewhat disconcerting.

As luck would have it a layby came into view, so she managed to pull over the car to safety.

By this time she was starting to cry.

More background - This was late in the evening on a quiet deserted road, which made it ever more spooky.

Managing to calm her down after about 5 minutes or so I asked her what the hell happened back there?

It really shocked me. And her for that matter.

I dont know she replied. I was driving, everything was fine then I had this awful fear. Like something terrible was going to happen or just this massive dread.

I think I asked her - What visual, like a premonition? A car crash?

No she replied, just this overwhelming fear.

A very odd experience, also made slightly more creepy because as I was looking out of the car, to the side of me thick woodland is right next to the car. Its one of those times when you check the car doors are locked.

She never could explain what happened that night & its stuck in my memory after a number of years have passed.

Thanks for reading.
 
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