Yowie sighted at Bexhill in northern NSW

A Yowie has been sighted on Bangalow Road, just north of Bexhill by a Lismore resident.

The witness said the creature moved across the two lanes of bitumen, raising his arm to apparently shield its eyes from the bright high beam glare of the approaching car.

"I would have seen it for between 20 and 30 seconds," the witness recalled. "It was really moving at the time. It leapt the fence no problem. All I can remember was seeing this large black object with a solid build, lanky legs and long lanky arms.

"It wasn't clothed ... it wasn't wearing clothes like a human."

The witness said the creature ran with a fast, stooped pace. It had high shoulders and almost no neck and a small head.

"It was like its head was shrunken into its shoulders."

Sydney-based yowie researcher, Paul Cropper, said the recent sighting revealed some "classic" elements which provided a common thread linking many experiences by many people over many decades.

"The fact that this thing was heavy set, with long arms and a small head ... these are classic traits," Mr Cropper said.

The area where the yowie was seen has a long history of similar sightings with stories running in the local paper, The Northern Star, since the 1800s.

Yowie spotted in upper Blue Mountains, NSW

The new Blue Mountains Cultural Centre opened on the weekend and thousands of locals poured through the doors to see firsthand the flash new library and art gallery, and the breathtaking views of the surrounding landscape from the expansive lookout/verandah.

But as the CFZ posse wandered the large, spacious rooms and admired local art created by local artists both new and old, we were gobsmacked to see...a Yowie!

Not a real live hairy beastie, you understand, but an artistic representation of one created by Aboriginal artist Shaun Boree Hooper of the Wiradjuri people in 2009.

It's quite an eye-catching piece of artwork as you can see.

If you're visiting the Blue Mountains, be sure to stop in at the centre and check it out.

MYTH - Yowie movie premieres in Sydney

The official poster.

Last Friday night some CFZers attended a private screening for actors, friends and family associated with the mockumentary Blair Witch-style MYTH movie, a creature feature starring Australia's very own hairy hominid horror the Yowie!

And they were in for a surprise because a very real and unintended special effect occurred while the film crew was shooting its movie overnight in rugged bushland.

Eight seconds of strange and compelling 'eye shine' (the visible effect of Tapitum Lucidum where the pupil of an animal appears to glow) was captured in the background, mystifying everyone as the images only came to light during the editing process, although some of the actors confessed to feeling uncomfortable filming at the location.

CFZ Australia will be getting hold of the footage shortly to share with readers of the blog.

Mike Williams and Rebecca Lang, authors of Australian Big Cats: An Unnatural History of Panthers, attended the premiere, as did Neil and Sandy Frost, whose experiences in the Blue Mountains have become legendary themselves.

Mike was wrangled in as official 'creature adviser' for the film and his house featured as one of the sets for the 'Professor' character who, along with an American documentary maker, goes in search of the hairy myth of the Blue Mountains.

A prop from the film - not bad!

Here's the official blurb: "The film takes place in the summer of 2009 when a party of four people go in search of the legendary Yowie...They were never seen or heard from again...This film is actual recovered footage of their final days."

The horror film was highly enjoyable, and took the two men behind it - Justin and Rob of King Hit Productions - almost two years to bring to fruition. In that time they spent many days shooting in and around Hazelbrook, one of the well-known Yowie 'hot spots' in the World Heritage-listed wilderness an hour west of Sydney.

Drop by and Like their Facebook page. And stay tuned for more news!

We caught up with the men behind the film for a quick chat on the night...

Yowie looked like 'big black person'

"The trees...sounded like they were exploding, rather than being knocked over..." according to this witness, whose Blue Mountains yowie encounter left him shocked and shaken.

Source:LiveScience

The Live Science website has made this cracker graphic freely available to promote its story on bigfoot-type creatures, so pop on over and check it out!

"The big hairy monster we call Bigfoot has both eluded and fascinated many, with blurry photos and even blurrier video being some of the best evidence the creature exists.

"The Down Under variety, dubbed Yowie, reportedly stands anywhere from 5 to 11 feet (1.5 to 3.4 meters) tall, and has yellow or red eyes deeply set inside a dome-shaped head."

We wonder what a similar survey would turn up in Australia?

Read more here.

A Blue Mountains Yowie?

In today's post we continue to 'get our Yowie on' with another witness interview from the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, NSW, carried out only this week with thanks to local researcher Neil Frost.

Our witness Sean shares his unsettling tales of camping trips with uninvited hairy guests and inexplicable showers of stones!

The Lake George Yowie

Over the years we've amassed quite a bit of interesting footage - mostly witness interviews but occasionally wildlife footage as well. We've also been given footage to share, and this latest offering from authors Tony Healy and Paul Cropper is a pearler - an interview with a man who saw the Lake George Yowie in the mid-1970s!

Lake George (also known by its indigenous name Weereewa - 'bad water') is an aquatic conundrum, a 25km long shallow, salty body of water that lies between Sydney and the nation's capital, Canberra. Its ebb and flow - the Lake will dry up completely for years at a time - has been the source of much local superstition and legend. Several fishermen and five Duntroon military academy cadets have drowned in its waters, and all manner of things have been found when the waters have receded - including a plane!

All kinds of phenomena has visited its unpredictable shore - ghosts, UFOs, and as you'll hear now, even Australia's own bigfoot, the yowie!

Revisiting the Mt George Yowie

A sketch of the hairy creature the women saw.

Yesterday we brought you the story of a potential case of mistaken identity involving the 2009 yowie sighting at Mt George, NSW.

The witnesses recreate what they saw at the roadside.

Manning River police now believe that the two witnesses, Faye Burke and Alana Garrett, may have actually seen the afro-enhanced silhouette of fugitive Malcolm Naden.

But let's revisit what the two women claimed in the aftermath of their sighting:

"I looked back up at the road and I saw ahead in the headlights this big hairy animal thing on the side of the winding road," Faye said. "It was about eight foot tall and four foot wide."

Alana said they yelled out "holy hell" along with a list of other unmentionable words. "We panicked," they said.

"I couldn't turn the car around because I had the trailer and the road was too narrow," Faye said. "I was s**t-scared and thought I better not mess with this thing in case it lifts the trailer up and tips us over the bank edge."

Keeping her foot on the accelerator and speeding past the thing, Faye said she turned to Alana and said: "Did you see that? She said in a scared voice: 'Do you mean that thing that looked like a Big Foot?' I said: No it was a Yowie." And Alana screamed back: "Same thing!".

"After we reached the top of the hill I wanted to turn around and get a photo with my mobile phone," Faye said.

But Alana was too scared to go back. She said if the passenger window had been wound down she could have reached out and touched it.

Faye and Alana said the hairy thing stood perfectly still "like it was at attention".

"Its back was facing us and it was looking into the embankment next to the road and it had dark chocolate brown hair which was all matted," Alana said.

They described the creature that they saw as being "eight foot tall, four foot wide" with dark matted hair.

Hardly comparable to Naden's description, which has him at 177cm tall - five foot 10 in the old scale.

The pair also mention they were fearful the creature might lift the trailer and tip their car over the edge of the steep embankment.

It seems unlikely that driving past a man of average height would invoke the same level of fear. And even given the fact Naden now apparently sports an impressive afro, grown during his years on the run, could his new 'do really be mistaken for a thick body-covering coat of hair?

So once again we revisit yesterday's question - Hairy Man or hairy man?

Author Tony Healy to speak at Braidwood's Cheese Factory

Authors Paul Cropper and Tony Healy.

In the early colonial era Aborigines often warned British settlers to beware of large, ape-like creatures that lurked in the forested mountains. They knew the creatures by many names, including jurrawarra, puttikan and doolagarl.

Soon the colonists, too, began to experience hair-raising encounters with the hulking, foul-smelling creatures, which they referred to as “Australian apes” or “yahoos”. Today they are generally referred to as yowies.

Tony began researching the yowie mystery in 1975. Since then he has interviewed more than a hundred eyewitnesses and searched for the damnably elusive creatures in every Australian state and territory. He has also ventured overseas in search of other semi-legendary ape-men such as the yeti, the orang mawas and the sasquatch.

In his talk Tony will outline the yowie saga from the pre-colonial era to the present day, concentrating particularly on stories from the Braidwood area, and will discuss some of the theories that have been put forward to explain – or explain away – Australia’s most baffling zoological mystery.

A few copies of The Yowie, In Search of Australia’s Bigfoot (Anomalist Books, 2006), which he co-authored with Paul Cropper, and which contains 300 carefully documented eyewitness reports plus a lot of Aboriginal yowie lore, will be available for purchase.

The Old Cheese Factory

~ Long Table Lunch with the Yowies ~

A presentation on the Yowie followed by a long table lunch at $33 a head. 

Bookings essential!

Sunday November 6th 2011, from 11am.

http://www.braidwoodmade.com.au/contact.html

Reidsdale Rural Enterprises

The Old Cheese Factory

92 Sawyers Ridge Road 

Reidsdale

NSW 2622

Tel: 02 4846 1999

Of crows and yowies...

Newcastle Herald columnist Jeff Corbett dips into the Yowie well again in his latest column...

"He is a beef farmer in a valley about 20 kilometres west of Kempsey, and Ron Clarke was with his sister, now Joan Delforce of Wallsend, and other brothers and sisters 50 years ago when they saw yowies many times on their family dairy farm not far from Ron's beef farm today. They describe them as covered in dark brown to black hair, with long hair around the neck, about the height of a tall man, bear like, and sometimes on two legs, sometimes on four.

Last December, after I wrote of yowies and an Elermore Vale couple's sighting of a yowie, Joan told me how she and her family members had seen yowies alone and in family groups many times around their dairy farm.

Late last week Ron told me how he had woken before sunrise one morning when he was 14 to find an adult yowie in his room, and that it stayed there for some little time until his father's alarm clock burst into life at 4.30, when it went hurrying off. Ron's father, by the way, had refused to believe his children until he had his own encounter with a yowie.

The Kempsey area has been a hotspot for yowie sightings, according to the definitive yowie book, The Yowie - In Search of Australia's Bigfoot, by Tony Healy and Paul Cropper."

More on the Grafton Yowie

Yowie researcher and author Paul Cropper was interviewed recently on ABC Radio in relation to the latest Yowie sighting - north of Grafton, NSW - to hit the headlines. 

“In our book we recorded around 350 reports going back to the late 1700s, early 1800s, but I imagine there’s a lot more than that which don’t ever reach the media – people have these experiences and then just keep it to themselves,” Mr Cropper told the Daily Examiner last week.

“One thing you can say with absolute certainty is that Aborigines and Europeans have been recording these things for a long time – the Aboriginal stories go back to the Dreamtime and the European stories go back to basically the first settlement … there’s just this consistent thread of stories up until (last) Tuesday morning."

The related ABC Radio interview is great and the witness statement sounds intriguing indeed! Have a listen.

If you're interested in reading about similar sightings, or checking out the Bible of Yowie research, The Yowie: In Search of Australia's Bigfoot, be sure to drop by Paul and co-author Tony Healy's website www.yowiefile.com.

Driver spots Yowie near Grafton, NSW

Jeez, we put up a post about what Yowies look like and, bugger me, a Yowie sighting surfaces!

And now to the sighting...courtesy of the Daily Examiner. The above picture is a blurry track found near the scene - is it a Yowie or perhaps just a big foot?

~~~~~~~

WHAT'S more than two metres (six foot) tall, solidly built and covered in shaggy hair?

If your answer was “that guy down at the local,” you're probably right but it's also a common description of a mythical Australian creature known as a yowie, a specimen of which has been reportedly spotted near Centenary Dr, north of Grafton.

A Hunter Valley man named Dean, who did not wish to be identified further, thinks he may have caught a glimpse of one of the creatures, a kind of an Australian version of Bigfoot, as he was driving along the section of road in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Dean, whose work sees him driving more than 5000km a week around NSW, was travelling south along the Pacific Hwy, north of Grafton just before 2.30am when he took the Centenary Dr bypass. Shortly after turning into the road he saw something that shook him to the core.

“I reached the top of the hill and I was coming around the sweeping corner to the right when I noticed something a lot larger than a kangaroo in the middle of the road – my headlights weren't on it yet but it was a bright night and I saw what looked like a large person stooped over, with a big overcoat on,” Dean said.

“At the time I thought ‘you silly old thing, what are you doing in the middle of the road at this time of the morning', but next thing I knew my headlights started to light it up and it took one giant step off the road, it went from standing up like a person to going down on all fours and then it disappeared into the scrub in about three bounds.”

Dean, who is used to night-driving and fatigue management, slowed down and was looking into the scrub for the creature and said he saw it silhouetted against the sky.

“It had an almost sort of a square, shaggy block head sitting straight on its shoulders – I'm a pretty big guy but it made me absolutely awe-struck how huge its body was – it had its arm up against a tree and it had about a foot of hair hanging from under its biceps.”

He estimated the creature to be at least two metres tall and covered in what looked like jet-black hair.

Dean said he had no idea what to think until he described the incident to colleagues later who said it was similar to yowie-sighting stories they'd heard in their travels.

Since then Dean said he had been researching ... to rationally explain what he saw but has yet to find a satisfactory answer.

“Anybody who knows me knows I'm the ultimate realist but this was an awe-inspiring moment, it's definitely made me a believer,” Dean said.

During his search for answers however, Dean came across the website of Australian yowie researcher, Paul Cropper who was very interested in his story.

Mr Cropper, who has also co-written a book on yowies, said Dean's story wasn't unusual.

“In our book we recorded around 350 reports going back to the late 1700s, early 1800s, but I imagine there's a lot more than that which don't ever reach the media – people have these experiences and then just keep it to themselves,” Mr Cropper said.

Theories abound as to what yowies could be, including an unknown species of ape or even an undiscovered close relative to homo sapiens, he said.

“One thing you can say with absolute certainty is that Aborigines and Europeans have been recording these things for a long time – the Aboriginal stories go back to the Dreamtime and the European stories go back to basically the first settlement ... there's just this consistent thread of stories up until Tuesday morning,” he said.

Anyone in the Clarence Valley who has had a similar experience can contact Mr Cropper, in confidence, via email on yowie99@gmail.com

Meet the Cryptozoologist: Paul Cropper

The fifth guest in our new Meet the Cryptozoologist series is well-known Australian Fortean and author Paul Cropper (above left) one half of a dynamic duo that includes co-author Tony Healy.

Welcome Paul!

How did you first get involved in researching strange and mysterious creatures?
My interest in cryptozoology began while I was at High School in the early 1970s. I remember my parents had a Readers Digest coffee-table book on Animal Mysteries that had an article on the Loch Ness investigation. I also used to buy an English magazine for kids called ‘World of Wonder’ that regularly ran articles on the Yeti, Sea Serpents and other mysteries.

I didn’t really get started until about 1975, when I saw a newspaper article on the Emmaville panther, which I cut out and put aside. After that, in about 1976/7, I came across a fantastic local magazine called ‘Psychic and Paranormal Australian’ (sure hate to meet one of those) which featured articles by Rex Gilroy. I was hooked.

What were some of the early influences in your life?
In terms of cryptozoology, probably Tim Dinsdale’s Loch Ness books and also John Keel. His ‘Strange Creatures’ is one of all time favourite books. I was lucky enough to meet him in New York in the 1990s.

Have you personally seen one of these creatures?
No. In Texas in 2005 I heard a roar like a lion coming from the other side of bigfoot-haunted Caddo Lake. I came across what may have been yowie footprints near Kempsey NSW in 1995. Locally, I’ve spent time with Dean Harrison and Neal Frost in the Blue Mountains and heard some really strange stuff, but I’ve never had a close-up visual sighting.

What creatures particularly interest you?
Morag in Loch Morar. I love the Scottish lake monsters and Loch Morar was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever visited.

What cryptids are most likely to exist in your opinion?
Orang Pendek, Yeti and of course our own ABCs.

What’s your favourite?
Nessie. I’ve been to Loch Ness three times and would go back in a second. If there isn’t a monster there, there should be!

What’s your favourite Australian cryptid?
The Queensland Marsupial Tiger. Striped, savage super-puss, able to climb trees and said to lurk in the Qld rainforests.

Have you developed any theories around where the more unusual animals - i.e. yowies/bigfoot - have come from?
No. When I started I was convinced they were flesh and blood. After I read Keel, I was sure they were all paranormal. Now, I don’t really have a theory, just a certainty that the experiences are genuine and they have been happening for centuries.

Have you written any books/articles?
Yes. Out Of The Shadows, Mystery Animals Of Australia (1994) and The Yowie (2006) with Tony Healy.

Do you have a website?
www.yowiefile.com

How many mystery animal reports would you receive a year?
Around 20-30.

What’s the closest you’ve personally come to finding something?
When I found what may have been yowie footprints near Kempsey NSW in 1995. They are detailed on the website.

What’s the farthest you’ve traveled to go ‘in search of’ mystery animals?
Russia.

What’s next for you - any trips planned? Books or articles to write? Talks to give?
Back to Russia in September to catch up with the bigfooters there.

Could you share some of your favourite cryptozoology book titles with us?
The Search for Morag (Campbell/Solomon), Sasquatch the Apes Among Us (Green), Bunyips and Bigfoots (Smith).

What advice would you give anyone getting into the field of cryptozoology?
Keep an open mind and enjoy yourself.

In search of yowies

 
Belinda Garfoot is 54 years old and lives in the Newcastle suburb of Elermore Vale in NSW with husband Peter. In 1996, while on a driving holiday, she and Peter watched a yowie cross the Kings Highway between Braidwood and the coast.

Peter had pulled to the side of the road to rest the car's brakes when he saw the creature in the rear-vision mirror, and both turned to watch it for five to 10 seconds. 

It was, they say, at least 2.1 metres, or seven feet, tall, with disproportionally long arms, no neck, shaggy and with an upright walk. So what was it?

Garfoot's encounter is included in The Yowie - In Search of Australia's Bigfoot by Tony Healy and Paul Cropper - a serious look at a great many reports of yowies stretching back many years.

Read Newcastle Herald columnist's Jeff Corbett's recent blog post about yowies and keeping an open mind here.