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The Yowie

to be honest i dunno what it is hes drinking, one of my friends sent me the pic ill ask him what it is
 
Aussie ABC's

Just a thought, but if ABC's have been seen near Sydney, did any anomalous corpses turn up among the wildlife killed by the recent bushfires?
 
There dosen't seem to be any carcasses left after the fires,the news has been quiet on that front.But knowing how rugged the Blue Mountains are anything could be down there and unless it was near habitation you wouldn't know.The area also has quiet a few caves,so I guess Yowies could have sheltered in caves.
 
yowies

The other day Mick the manager of the local macadamia farm came down to pick up his doberman Stella who visits my dashound stella.I broached the subject of Yowies,he says stella wont go anywhere near the bush surrounding the trees at night,and he has heard crashing in the bush.He claims that what ever it is moves up the gully at night.While we were drinking heavily I suggested that we make a hide in a large gum tree,and sprinkle chocolate dipped bones on the ground so we can video our quarry.The new video camera will be here next week,so we are all hot to trot and keen as mustard,will keep you posted.
 
Be sure to make the ground around the tree nice and muddy, so if you miss him on camera you could get some physical evidence.
 
Hey, Wildman! If you need manpower why don't you get in touch with the Yowiehunters? A few of them don't live too far from where you will be operating.

By the way, are you conversant with the scurrilous story about the origin of the junjuddie which I posted in the "Bigfoot Worldwide" thread? I refer to them as brown jacks, but they're essentially the same critter.
 
yowies

Brown jacks,junjuddies,junjardies,nimbunj,all the same,and I havent seen that particular story on the web,but Ill look.I beleive in them simply because aboriginal friends have seen them,they permeate old legends and old bushman swear they are true.Good enough for me,its a mighty weird country and it only gets stranger at night.As for the yowie hunters,well they are mighty well equiped,very keen,very fit,but its a strange way (and bloody dangerous)bush bashing through the scrub at night,chasing something that outweighs you 2 to 1 and can out run you easily.No wonder their group contains a doctor(watch out for that branch,see that wombat hole yes the one you fell in) but seriously they are keen but on the whole 15 years younger than me,and I prefer the safety of a large gum tree,,and Ive got the time as I live 3 miles away.
 
Well, good luck, wildman. I like the chocolate idea. The yowiehunters reckon that peanut butter is well accepted by yowies too - a combination of chocolate and peanut butter should have 'em coming from miles away. :)

If you can get hold of a night scope, I can recommend their use. Just don't bother with the IR illuminator if it comes with one. People reckon yowies can see IR and won't go within a bull's roar of an area lit that way.

Keep us posted.
 
Set Steve Irwin on the buggers. He'll have wrestled one to the ground insdie of a week!
 
yowies

Now thats an idea,through Steve out of the tree at an attacking Yowie.Now thats enough to scare any living creature.Gee a starlight lense for my video,I wish I had the economic legs to get one.We have had the first rain for near a month,and this will be a good day looking for prints,have 2 days spare so will go for a bush bash in Brooyar Forest on the upper red soil plateau.Im more than positive something is lurking in the rainforest,you know that feeling when you are being watched(and its not the growers).
 
Gawd! You're a braver man than me, wildman. I live opposite woods in the middle of a big city in England, and I won't go in there at night!

Mind you, neither will any of my neighbours, nor the local dogs, after dark.

Or even teenagers, so there must be something weird going down in there (a Holy Well, black shapes - see other threads for details).

Let us know how you go, mate!
 
Transcript of a radio show:

The 'Australia Gorilla': An Insoluble Problem
Sunday 28 December 2003

Summary
Did the 'Australian Gorilla' really exist? Throughout much of the 19th century there were reports of some unknown animal called the 'Australian Gorilla' or 'Yahoo'. These reports were largely ignored by the scientists of the day. Retired public servant and historian Graham Joyner from Canberra takes another look at the story and comes up with some interesting ideas.

Program Transcript

Robyn Williams: This is Ockham’s Razor Number 997. It’s about a myth, a figment of the imagination, a wild fancy. Or is it? How many times has something as fanciful as a unicorn, a yeti, a mermaid or a werewolf turned out to be based on fact?

Here’s Canberra historian Graham Joyner, with his view of the unlikely.

Graham Joyner: Throughout much of the 19th century, reports of some unknown animal called the ‘Australian gorilla’ or ‘yahoo’ regularly emerged from the south-east corner of Australia, but were largely ignored by scientists of the day. On the two occasions when the existence of the animal did become the object of scientific attention, the real issues were marginalised.

In recent years the matter has been subjected to renewed debate, yet it is still poorly understood. Indeed, some years ago an academic acquaintance of mine with an interest in the matter told me of a revealing remark made to him by a scientist at The Australian Museum. The remark to my friend was along the lines that ‘Surely you at least understand that there have never been gorillas in Australia.’

Now it would be impossible to quarrel with this point of view. Australia is a land of marsupials while the gorilla is a placental animal which, except for a few in zoos, is found only in Africa. And similarly for the other large apes. Yet, paradoxically, I am going to suggest we might reasonably entertain the hypothesis that there have been ‘Australian gorillas’. How is this possible?

Another, more famous, paradox may throw light on this one. Since its introduction to Europeans in the late 18th century, the platypus has been an almost endless source of wonder. Umberto Eco, Professor of Semiotics at Bologna, has recently brought together various theoretical considerations to explain the amazement generated in scientific circles by this strange animal. In his book ‘Kant and the Platypus’, Eco asks what would Kant have made of the platypus?, although Eco might have chosen any number of other Australian animals to make his point.

Kant was, of course, the 18th century German philosopher who would never have seen a platypus but who gave us what he called a ‘Copernican revolution’ in our conventional view of the world, whereby the world conforms to the mind rather than the mind being merely receptive to the world.

As part of this transcendental approach, Kant introduced a number of so-called categories of the understanding, but also saw the need for what he called the schema, a notion intermediate between the categories and the object perceived. The schema is supposed to permit the formation of the object perceived in the mind. Without it, Kant believed, objects could not be comprehended by the mind at all.

In talking about Kant and the platypus, Eco is leading up to a more general question: how do we construct the schema of an object which was previously completely unknown to us? Or, more simply, how do you conceptualise something totally new? Whatever the answer in terms of critical philosophy, it is clear that we often react to an unknown phenomenon by seeking that scrap of content in our minds that seems to account for the new fact. In other words, the unknown is often seen in terms of the known.

Apart from the platypus, Eco gives two examples of this process. The first concerns Marco Polo and the rhinoceros. It seems that Polo had never seen the rhinoceros but already possessed the notion of the unicorn. He therefore decided that the rhinoceros must be that fabulous beast, although a strange example of the species in being large and black rather than slender and white. Eco also speculates on what Montezuma might have made of reports about the conquistadors’ horses, which his Aztec informants had perceived to be large deer.

Another example of this peculiar form of blindness comes from astronomy. In 1610 Galileo announced that he observed the planet Saturn in triplet form. He thought that two smaller bodies, or ‘stars’, accompanied the planet on either side (although on a later occasion these had inexplicably vanished). It seems that Galileo lacked the ability to conceptualise planetary rings, which were not identified as such for almost half a century.

These and many examples like them support the theory that discovery, even the discovery of discrete objects by direct observation, can often be a complex and protracted process. More significantly they suggest that the mind can impose a pattern on the world and that empiricism, the doctrine that what we perceive corresponds to the external world, doesn’t always work.

Taking all this into account, let us now try to imagine the real possibility that some large animal continued to exist, unknown to science, in areas of south-east Australia up to the beginning of the 20th century. How would it have first appeared to early European visitors and what might the Aborigines have had to say about it?

It is probable that any such large animal, seen only briefly and intermittently by European settlers on the fringes of society would, in the manner discussed, have been identified with something already present in the minds of its observers. And if it stood upright on two legs or climbed trees, what more suitable model than one of the better known apes, either the orang-utan or, from the 1860s onwards, the gorilla?

And here we have resolved the paradox mentioned earlier. There could be no gorillas in Australia but it was quite possible for an ‘Australian gorilla’, whatever that might be, to make an appearance. This expression was, after all, just a name, though one which, without the simultaneous appearance of the creature itself, was sure to be misunderstood.

Similarly, someone knowing nothing of the Tasmanian tiger might object that such an animal could not exist because there were no tigers in Tasmania.

Incidentally, use of the orang-utan as a model for the ‘Australian gorilla’ is particularly interesting. The Adult orang-utan may first have been seen in England around the end of the 18th century. By the early 19th century there is documentary evidence that this animal, or something very like it, was being exhibited in English menageries under the name ‘yahoo’, the brutish creature invented by Dean Swift in Gulliver’s Travels. This could well account for the appearance of the name ‘yahoo’ in Australia from the 1830s onwards to describe the creature later called the ‘Australian gorilla’.

Names sit uneasily upon objects they represent. In cases of something totally new, a name may be borrowed from a conventional form but, unless naming is matched with perception, there is nothing to link the one with the other. Later, if the name was always obscure and if the animal no longer appears in our visual frame of reference, the entire concept, both name and object, may become problematic. Such at least was the fate of the name ‘yahoo’ and the unknown creature to which it referred.

A further difficulty arises where more than one language is involved. Different languages can categorise the world in different ways so that it is not always possible to match a word in one language with that in another. For example, it seems that the French word ‘jaune’ does not correspond exactly to the English ‘yellow’. And the Greek ‘logos’ is famously of wider application than the English ‘word’.

In the case of the so-called ‘Australian gorilla’, linguistic and cultural differences between Europeans and the Aborigines would have represented an almost insurmountable barrier to understanding. No linguistic representation of the concept by the Aborigines could be expected to fit readily into the categories employed by European minds.

However, there are indications that the Aboriginal word ‘dulugal’ from the Dharawahal and Dhurga languages represents, among other concepts, the animal referred to as the ‘Australian gorilla’. Not surprisingly perhaps, linguists have made rather a mess of this identification and their efforts are further hampered by the fact that the standard treatment of ‘dulugal’ relies on relatively recent oral sources while managing to overlook every relevant historical citation.

Returning to the attitude of science, someone who ought to have known better once suggested to me that acknowledgement of the possible of an ‘Australian gorilla’ is rather like belief in the existence of God. But right at the heart of the present matter lies a series of what are supposed to be observations.

In other words, we are dealing not with metaphysics but with data of an empirical nature, which may be true or false, but the truth of which can be determined by scientific means. In fact evidence for the ‘Australian gorilla’ is based on testing of observations using a correlative method.

This involves comparison of physical characteristics, such as shape, distinctive markings, dual gait, possession of nails or claws and tree climbing ability, from descriptions given in independent accounts. An actual example of this process follows shortly.

Meanwhile, another reason for the indifference of zoologists then as now, lies in a peculiarity of zoological method. That is, zoologists normally require a body.

The most famous example of this is a fictional one. At the climax of Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel ‘The Lost World’ the central character presents a sceptical audience with various pieces of evidence for the continued existence of prehistoric life on an isolated South American plateau, but all are rejected. He then asks, ‘You would require to see the thing itself?’ and is told, ‘Undoubtedly’. Whereupon a pterodactyl is released from a packing case and pandemonium ensues.

This doctrine of the primacy of the physical specimen is still a matter of faith among zoologists. The former Director of the Australian Museum has written of another disputed entity: ‘Once physical evidence is found (by this I mean a body…) then the issue would gain some standing.’

So there it is. Nothing but the animal itself will do. There are, however, a number of problems with this all or nothing approach. First, it is without any basis in empirical theory. Next, there is no equivalent demand in other branches of science, such as physics or astronomy. Again, it makes nonsense of the concept of evidence, since to demand the thing itself means that no evidence at all may be admitted. Finally, it is not in accord with what actually happens in many cases of discovery, which often follow a broken, meandering path where the object itself is only gradually revealed.

Perhaps as a consequence of their preoccupation with specimens, zoologists can often be found explaining away awkward pieces of information, while avoiding all linguistic and philosophical issues and misdirecting anything with an indigenous content to a box labelled ‘Aboriginal myth’.

In conclusion, let us consider the following vignette from the last occasion on which the case of the ‘Australian gorilla’ came under scientific scrutiny.

In October 1912 the poet and cattle farmer, Sydney Wheeler Jephcott found some tracks near Bombala which he believed to be those of an unknown animal. The print of the fore foot resembled, but differed from, that of a human hand. Jephcott made casts of the tracks, which he sent with a covering note to Edgeworth David, then Professor of Geology at Sydney University. David, after the examining the casts, pronounced them fakes.

It is easy to imagine the scene. David, who is always being sent unusual objects to identify, reads Jephcott’s letter then picks up one of the casts. The eminent geologist frowns as he ponder the object before him. After a while he smiles and shakes his head. It is only a human hand after all. The prints have been manufactured by some third party.

David’s examination, cursory as it was, invoked the following defence from a contemporary naturalist. Science is really enlightenment, he explained, it is never dogmatic. It is merely a question of evidence. Produce contrary evidence and science will modify its view accordingly.

The trouble with this idealistic view of science is that, for various reasons, it is not true. As is well known, established theories are seldom challenged by contrary evidence until a competing theory has overwhelming support. More to the point, evidence may also be overlooked because confrontation with novelty can compel the mind to search for an image with which it is already familiar.

And this is what evidently happened here. After the manner of Galileo and the rings of Saturn, David lacked the concept of the ‘Australian gorilla’ and would have had to resort to construction of some conventional mental image to account for the unfamiliar object before him. And what better than the image of the human hand already provided by Jephcott?

In hindsight, this misconception might have been avoided. Unknown to both men, there existed a precedent which provided support for Jephcott’s hypothesis. The unknown creature killed near Braidwood nearly 20 years earlier possessed fore feet described as ‘shaped like a man’s hands with the palm precisely similar and toes which had a close resemblance to fingers with overgrown nails’.

In other words, the only other detailed description of the ‘Australian gorilla’s fore feet neatly confirmed Jephcott’s description of the cast that David had rejected.

As it is, David here represents not enlightenment, but enlightenment’s antithesis: authority. His action exemplifies what the late Stephen Jay Gould, on his essay on the lynxes, aptly called ‘the authoritarian form of the empiricist myth’. Perhaps the real enlightenment figure is Jephcott, who is seen as informed, determined, courageous and relatively unburdened by preconception.

Finally, I referred in the title of this talk to the matter as ‘insoluble’, not because there was no problem, or because no solution presented itself, but because there seems to be no will to solve it. It would be interesting to know whether that can change almost a century after the matter was last debated in public.

Robyn Williams: So, what would it take to convince you? Graham Joyner is a historian and, as you heard, something of a philosopher, and he lives in Canberra, where most yahoos are in Federal Parliament.

Next week, rocket scientist, Peter Macinnes.

I’m Robyn Williams.
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http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1014501.htm
 
Mysteries in left feet

GLord
Saturday, 4 February 2006

IT ALL began with footprints in the sand. Two left feet. Not the kind associated with dance classes and the like, but two feet, looking like any other footprints, except they were both left feet.

This occurred on Pambula beach on an otherwise perfectly normal weekday November morning. The few other beach-goers were going about their normal business in a normal sort of way. Discreet inspection revealed all had the correct assignation of one left and one right foot. And their big toes were not disproportionately large, like these peculiar footprints in the sand.

It's the kind of strangeness that is difficult to get your head around. You wonder whether you're seeing things, whether an imp crept into the peaceful holiday house and spiked your cornflakes (of course not!), as you search for more practical explanations. Could two people with identical feet have been walking in such a way as to make it look like the tracks of one person? Or, more plausible, could it be a prankster in fake feet? Maybe, but why pick Pambula beach on a random Tuesday morning? Why not Bondi at a weekend?

No logical answer was forthcoming, so the puzzle was abandoned and would have been forgotten, had a visit to the Eden Killer Whale Museum not jogged the memory.

But there, after marvelling again at the story - and skeleton - of Old Tom, the orca who was virtually single-handedly responsible for whaling in Twofold Bay (and after he died, whaling ceased), a stroll downstairs to the indigenous section revealed ancient history, customs - and the feet. There they were, on a wall panel. At least they were the same shape as the strange footprints in the sand, but were more logically left and right. These were the footprints of the doolagarl, or doolagard, the yowie that allegedly roams the South Coast, and these feet were painted by former volunteer curator Alex McKenzie about 10 years ago, explained Eden Killer Whale Museum curator Jodie White.

This writer had no intention of wondering whether yowies actually do exist, or what could possibly have two left feet, but then you can never tell what's around the corner. When it comes to yowies and similar enormous creatures, it is interesting that this phenomenon, in various forms, has been reported for centuries in China, America, Canada and, of course, Australia.

At the time of writing, the Government of the Malaysian state of Johor has announced it will organise a proper scientific expedition to track down a legendary ape man reputed to roam its jungles. A spate of sightings of their Big Foot, a creature up to 3m tall that leaves footprints 45cm long, has inspired this renewed interest.

Australia's yowies have been reported on since before the settlers came to the land down under, with Aboriginal rock paintings in north Queensland depicting a tall, hairy creature. Yowie sightings have been reported since soon after the First Fleet, and continue.

But, it must be remembered, no conclusive evidence that yowies exist has been produced. Plaster casts of footprints abound but, similar as they may be, it's not proof. A picture of a yowie, yowie fur, or yowie scat, would be far more conclusive, but this has not happened.

Of course those who've seen one remain convinced that they exist.

While tales may differ over time, the recurring theme is a gorilla-like animal over 2m tall, with an unbearable, nauseating stench about it. This terrifying creature is covered in fur and is reported to have long arms and no neck.

For Canberra's own Tim the Yowie man, seeing such a creature in the Brindabellas in 1994 proved a Damascus experience, an encounter that first saw him hunting yowies and eventually pursuing the unusual the world over, trying to explain the unexplained.

Tim, the National Museum of Australia's resident cryptonaturalist, treads a path of caution when dealing with the weird and wonderful, only resorting to paranormal explanations when "normal" doesn't crack it.

He really doesn't know if yowies exist. When he first saw his yowie 12 years ago it was very real to him. Since then, he's hunted for the flesh-and-blood creature the country over and found no sign. Now he tends to think it is some sort of paranormal phenomenon.

And even this gets people heated up. "The paranormal goes against logic, but so does a 2m-tall creature coming out of the bush that nobody can identify," he said.

Some five years after his own sighting he went to a Big Foot conference in Ohio, at which the topic of whether Big Foot and his ilk were flesh and blood or paranormal got "very heated. So heated, in fact, that a fight between for and against took place in the parking lot."

In his paper The Yahoo, The Yowie and Reports of Australian Hairy Bipeds, Dr Colin P.Groves of the Department of Anthropology at the ANU notes that Australia was indeed once home to giant things, such as the rhino-sized Diprotodon and Zygomaturus, creatures distantly related to wombats.

He also notes the reports of "wild men" from settlers and pioneers, which he says "are a hotchpotch of shooters' campfire tales, unidentifiable apparitions seen at dusk, and various hairy horrids that frightened the horses and demoralised the dogs".

In this paper, Groves concludes that the evidence for the existence of an Australian wild man - or yowie - is "extremely poor".

But if you want to believe in the possibility that yowies really do exist, you're well placed. The region around Canberra, the Brindabellas and the Snowy Mountains are thick with yowie stories.

One faithful recorder of them is Rex Gilroy, whose website carefully chronicles yowie encounters from pioneering days to more modern times. Take his report of what happened to Susan Townsend, her female friend and their boyfriends when camping on the shores of Lake Jindabyne in January 1990. Townsend was getting the fire started while the others collected wood when she noticed a strong smell. Then she heard twigs snapping and turned around to see a hairy, 2.3m-tall giant male creature striding out of the trees just 10m away. He moved towards her but, hearing the others coming, bolted into the forest.

Other yowies in Gilroy's collection of tales are less reticent - tearing apart prospector's huts, hurling rocks and boulders at people, emitting blood-curdling screams, and generally being "hairy horrids", to borrow Groves's term. Some tell of yowies being particularly bloody, attacking and killing horses, for example, and there are "eyewitness" tales from pioneers of a yowie taking men, never to be seen again.

Of course, Tim the Yowie man gets told most yowie stories going, and he seldom heard of any violence associated with yowies. "Yowies seem to be non-violent in my experience. Only occasionally do I get a report of it lunging or attacking human beings ... I've been called to investigate yowie signs, such as scratches on trees 2m above the ground, but have not been convinced that only a yowie could have caused that."

There is, though, "a flow of reports all of a similar nature - the stink, the long arms, no neck, the hair".

One of the stories that sticks in his mind was told to him by a ranger in the Gold Coast hinterland, who said the stench was so bad he'd thrown up.

But with all these appearances, not a single yowie has left a sign that can conclusively prove that he, or others like him, exist. Footprints are easy to fake, far easier than a clump of fur or, better still, the convenient carcass of a 2m-tall yowie.

Why the stories persist over centuries, and why yowie descriptions have so many similarities even though witnesses are so far apart from one another remains a mystery.

But if the yowie really does exist, can anyone explain the two left feet?
Click to expand...

http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/detail ... _id=456523
 
My local paper!

I don't read it, because it's crap, though.

I really need to see what I can find out about the hotbed of cryptozoology on my doorstep.
 
Anome_ said:
My local paper!

I don't read it, because it's crap, though.
Click to expand...

If they are all like the above I can't blame you - if it was just a bit more rambling and incoherent it'd difficult to tell what it was tlaking about ;)

Anome_ said:
I really need to see what I can find out about the hotbed of cryptozoology on my doorstep.
Click to expand...

Well let us know what you find - obviously if you can catch the doolagarl by UnCon time... ;)
 
Yippee, I just spotted a yowie

10.02.2006
By LEIGH PRITCHARD

THERE are yowies in the Clarence Valley.

That’s the claim of the yowie expert, Paul Compton, who believes yowies are residing in Jackadgery and Washpool.

"There is a big chance they are here, there has been a sighting before in Grafton," Mr Compton said.

For 15 years Mr Compton has been searching for yowies, which are primates (gigantopithecus). The species is thought to have died out 100,000 years ago.

Mr Compton said the last sighting in the Valley was 15 years ago on the Old Glen Innes Road.

In 2004, Mr Compton said he saw his third yowie on the Tenterfield Road, 15 kilometres from home at Glen Innes.

"It was seven foot tall, with long hair, an orangy brown colour," Mr Compton said. "It is like a large ape."

He said evidence he had collected included footprints, photos, faeces and hair samples, which he claimed matched ‘Bigfoot’ and ‘Sasquatsh’ hair found in the United States.

On Monday Mr Compton received a report of a yowie sighting at Cessnock, in the Hunter Valley.

The Clarence Valley National Parks and Wildlife Service spokesperson, Lawrence Orel, said the chances of yowies existing, without the National Park’s knowledge, were slim.

"A lot of the area (between Grafton and Glen Innes) is former state forests or grazing land," Mr Orel said.

"It is rugged, it has been fully utilised by humans for more than 100 years."

Anybody who thinks they have seen a yowie can email Paul Compton on [email protected].
Click to expand...

Source
 
Photographs back yowie hunch: claim

More news from Paul Compton:

YOWIE hunter Paul Compton has long believed a giant animal lives in the Glen Innes district - and he claims he finally has photos to prove it.

Two days before Christmas, Mr Compton set up a wild view trail camera in an area north west of Glen Innes he has been watching for some time. A week later he returned, finding the camera - triggered by movement - had shot 921 images, including two showing a blurred black figure he claims to be the elusive animal.

“There had been a lot of activity there - rocks moved, broken tree limbs - I’d left a couple of cooked chops in a plastic bag in a tree about eight foot of the ground as bait, and when I returned it had been ripped apart,” he said.

Mr Compton estimates the shadowy figure to be about 35m from the camera, and estimates it’s height to be about (4 foot six inches) - “I took my son out and got him to stand in the same place and he’s about the same height”.

He says he believes the animal is a descendant of the giant ancient ape Gigantapithicus, which was in Asia tens of thousands of years ago.

“I’ve got hair at home that’s been identified by Dr Henner Fahrenbach from Oregon Regional Primate Research Centre in America who believes it to be a high primate and identical to the type of hair belonging to the (American) Big Foot or Sasquatch.”

Mr Compton, who has plaster casts of footprints, has become somewhat of an authority on big animals, and in October will be a guest speaker at the three day Mid American Big Foot Research Foundation conference in Oklahoma to talk about big animals in Australia.

Meanwhile, two commercial television current affairs programs are looking at the recently snapped photos.

“There’s never been a picture before, this could really put Glen Innes on the map,” he said.

Source and "picture" here: http://tinyurl.com/2wz6ar

That could be anything, as far as I can see? :roll:
 
Looks like a shed to me. A shed in the wild!
 
I can only see a photo of him holding a photo. Not really much use.

Of course, there's not much to see or do in Glen Innes.
 
Of course, there's not much to see or do in Glen Innes.
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What about the Celtic Festival? Or the Land of the Beardies Festival? Or the Standing stones? Fossicking for sapphires? Going to the Chapel theatre? Didn't you see their excellent production of "Chicago" last year?
 
I haven't been there since I stopped driving to Brisbane.

And, I stand by my initial statement.
 
In today's Breaking News, the link '"Bigfoot" spotted in Australia' goes to this story:


Australia: Bigfoot spotted in bush near Sydney

15 April 2009

Two backpackers on a year long trip around Australia got the fright of their life last week while they were out trekking in bushland in the vicinity of the township of Leura, not far from the well known Katoomba landmark, ‘The Three Sisters’.

It was early evening and by the two ladies admission a bit late to be by themselves in the bush. Ingrid Schön 23, of Germany and Adi Hassan, 22 of France decided to head back into town when they heard the breaking of branches and loud footsteps heading towards them. Ingrid shone a torch onto the track in front of them. At this point they both claim to have seen what they now describe as Bigfoot charge away into the distance.

‘Admittedly we did not get a close look but we think what we saw looked like the American Bigfoot, basically covered in fur and about two meters tall. It definitely had no clothes on and was not human.’ Ingrid told All News Web reporter Jadyn Cassidy. 'We were petrified and almost lost our way back in our nervous state' Ingrid commented.

The Blue Mountains is believed to be the home of a creature known as the Yowie, basically Australia’s version of Bigfoot or the Yeti. There have been many recent sightings. Prior to the arrival of Europeans local Aboriginal tribes were certain of its existence. Aboriginal communities still living in the Blue Mountains along with some other locals continue to believe the Yowie might be out there in the vast expanses of Australia’s Great Dividing Range.

http://www.allnewsweb.com/page6716713.php
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I live 15 minutes' drive from Leura, where the sighting is supposed to have taken place, and this is the first I've heard of it. The story hasn't exactly been taken up by the local media - which is so starved of sensation, it gives front page headlines to the redistribution of work hours at the local railway.

The yowie story that is getting coverage over here is...
 
...this beat up:


'Dog killed by Yowie'

Matt Cunningham
April 21st, 2009


Firdt it was UFOs, now it's feared Yowies could be on the loose in Darwin's rural area.

A Territory Yowie researcher believes the Big-Foot-like beast could be responsible for the recent death of a dog south of Darwin.

The dog's owners believed their seven-month-old puppy, which had its head ripped from its body, was mauled to death by dingoes.

But Andrew McGinn, who has been researching Yowies in the Top End for more than a decade, said it was possible the hairy ape-type beast was responsible for the attack.

"The way the guy's dog was killed was typical of a Yowie," he said.

"I know it sounds fanciful but over the past 100 years, dogs get killed or decapitated and people report feeling watched, having goats stolen or seeing some tall hairy thing in the days beforehand."

In the late 1990s there were several reports of Yowie sightings around Acacia Hills.

In August 1997, mango farmer Katrina Tucker reported being just metres away from what she described as a hairy humanoid creature on her Acacia Hills property.

Photographs of the creature's footprint were taken the next day and examined by the Northern Territory Museum, which concluded that Ms Tucker had been hoaxed.

But Mr McGinn said after speaking with Ms Tucker he had no doubt her story was true.

"After I met this lady I found she was clearly terrified," he said.

Carpenter Darryl Campbell reported seeing a similar creature near Adelaide River in 1998.

Mr McGinn contacted the Northern Territory News after reading a report that Acacia Hills resident Alan Ferguson had spotted UFOs flying around his home.

He said the area seemed to be home to a lot of unusual activity.

"I have been here for 16 years and I hear time and time again reports of these strange things around Acacia Hills," he said.

But Mr Ferguson said he had never seen a Yowie.

"I only see things scootin' around the sky, I don't see hairy monsters," he said,

"But if that's really true, what's next, dinosaurs running around the streets?"

http://www.ntnews.com.au/article/2009/0 ... tnews.html
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There have been stories of encounters with "hairy men" in the Australian bush for as long as there have been people in Australia; and this is the first time I've heard of anyone attributing a death to a yowie. I've heard people's own stories of how their van was rocked by a yowie, and I've heard one person's claim that he was cared for by a yowie when he broke his leg in the bush, but I have no idea where Andrew McGinn gets his idea of a typical yowie kill.
 
Going back a page - wildman left this thread in 2002, about to make a mission into the rainforest to look this yowie. Did he ever make it back?
 
Ffalstaf said:
There have been stories of encounters with "hairy men" in the Australian bush for as long as there have been people in Australia; and this is the first time I've heard of anyone attributing a death to a yowie. I've heard people's own stories of how their van was rocked by a yowie, and I've heard one person's claim that he was cared for by a yowie when he broke his leg in the bush, but I have no idea where Andrew McGinn gets his idea of a typical yowie kill.
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To be honest, I'm not sure there are that many stories of apemen seriously attacking humans either, whether they be Bigfoot or Yeti. I'd always assumed they were peaceful vegetarians, like the great apes are supposed to be, and reluctant to interact with people never mind bump them off.
 
Presupposing it's a very similar beast to the Yowie, in the US, Bigfeet seem to either avoid people or if necessary try to scare them off (smashing up logging equipment, thumping walls, screeching, or chucking rocks at cabins as per Fred Beck), but almost never are they directly harmful to humans. Albert Ostman, who claimed to have been kidnapped by a family of Bigfeet in the 20s, said he was treated very gently, and the older male only got slightly aggressive when Ostman tried to escape.

IIRC Bigfoot was ever only accused of murder once, in the "Headless Valley" case (Nahnni River valley (sp)?), where two decapitated human corpses were found in an area supposedly rich in Bigfoot sightings, though I seem to recall this was later proven to be criminally rather than cryptozoologically related.

However, dogs and Bigfeet notoriously don't mix. Dogs go beserk, and either throw themselves at Bigfeet with full tooth and claw (and invariably end up dead - see J&C Bord's "Alien Animals" and "Bigfoot Casebook", wherein they describe this in detail) or they get the frig out of there. Same goes for Yetis and Almas (apparently wolves stay the hell away), so I imagine much the same would apply with Yowies.
 
H_James said:
Going back a page - wildman left this thread in 2002, about to make a mission into the rainforest to look this yowie. Did he ever make it back?
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Seems to have. His profile says he last visited in 2004.

FWIW, local yowie hunters talk about similar schemes several times a year. Some of them even do them.


gncxx said:
I'd always assumed they were peaceful vegetarians, like the great apes are supposed to be....
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Yes, I always assumed they were vegetarians - though as stuneville says, capable of scaring people off.


stuneville said:
Presupposing it's a very similar beast to the Yowie, in the US, Bigfeet....
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The stories seem very similar.


stuneville said:
However, dogs and Bigfeet notoriously don't mix...so I imagine much the same would apply with Yowies.
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I can't fault your logic. I've just never heard of it happening.
 
It's possible if this dog was killed by a Yowie that it was in self defence. Depends how big the puppy was, but if it was little then the Yowie community could be responding to this slur with a "See ya in court!"

I always heard that if you're attacked by a dog you should pull its front legs apart and that'll make it stop pretty sharpish. Ripping its head off seems a bit over the top.
 
Seems they're not veggies but onminvores. More info on this and Sasquatch/dog/other animal interactions (again presupposing we can extend this to Yowies)...

The sasquatch is an omnivore with a substantial carnivorous component to its diet. They have been observed directly to eat leaves, berries, fruits, roots, aquatic plants and other vegetable matter, catch fish, dig up clams or ground squirrels, and prey on poultry, deer, elk and bear. In addition, they eat other odd items, such as young evergreen shoots, crayfish, road kill, meat or fish from human storage sites, hunter-killed game animals (these sometimes snatched in front of the hunter), and occasional garbage. They take an occasional livestock animal, but not with sufficient frequency as to produce organized persecution.

They appear to kill large prey animals by a blow with the fist, rock or stick or by twisting their necks, sometimes to the point of decapitation. Liver and other internal organs are their first targets. The remaining meat is sometimes stored on the ground under a haphazard shelter of sticks or lifted into tree forks above ground. No compelling evidence exists that they store food in any substantial way beyond this; only rarely has a sasquatch been observed carrying a fish some distance from its origin, or a deer, presumably into hiding.
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..from here.


Their responses to people vary from immediate withdrawal, the most common response, to lengthy inspection if no threat is perceived. They seem to react in a more relaxed fashion to women and children and avoid men, even in an accustomed setting, possibly as a function of human body language. All told, they are unaggressive to a fault, often leisurely retreating while being shot at. There is no documented case in the past 100 years of a sasquatch doing deliberate harm to a person.

Sasquatches seem to be indulgent of human children and small animals, like puppies, goat kids, and kittens. Several reports suggest that they may opportunistically retain small animals to use as live toys or pets as has been observed in bonobos. On the other hand, they reserve a special distaste for aggressive dogs, as do gorillas. They deal with these by slapping them (causing a 75 lb. dog to fly 40’) or flailing them against trees.
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..ibid.

Both the above from BFRO, which is IMHO one of the very best Sasquatch sites: unsensational, careful and considered with a very Fortean approach.

I know this has veered away from Yowies, but I think it's justified in this context.
 
Ffalstaf said:
There have been stories of encounters with "hairy men" in the Australian bush for as long as there have been people in Australia; and this is the first time I've heard of anyone attributing a death to a yowie. I've heard people's own stories of how their van was rocked by a yowie, and I've heard one person's claim that he was cared for by a yowie when he broke his leg in the bush, but I have no idea where Andrew McGinn gets his idea of a typical yowie kill.
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Don't worry, Tim The Yowie Man has come to the defence of the Yowie.
http://www.ntnews.com.au/article/2009/0 ... tnews.html
 
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