Nexus - 0205 - New Times Magazine-pages

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MAN - APES OF AUSTRALIA As [have said, historic sightings of the "great hairy man" lend credibility to relict hominid research. Why? Because they were taken seriously by the press of those times, generations before the ignorant tongue-in-cheek reporting regrettably practiced by today's "gentlemen of the press". There are vague stories of "hairy men" seen in the Hornsby dis- trict north of Sydney about 1822, followed shortly after by sight- ings on the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, and in the central western NSW mountain ranges. Sightings in the southern alpine region of Victoria/NSW date from around the 1850s, and in the northern NSW mountain ranges, such as on the Carrai Range west of Kempsey, from the 1840s. My files bulge with stories such as the following: In 1889, a cattleman, Mr Ben Delgate, with several other bush- men, was mustering stock in the Jindabyne district of the Snowy Mountains one late afternoon in May. As they moved the mob of cattle through timber on the banks of the Snowy River, their cattle dogs began acting strangely, sniffing the air, then whimpering and barking at something somewhere in the dense forest. Ben and his mates were startled to see, emerging from the trees, a tall hairy man-like creature 3m tall, brandishing a large tree limb which it began waving threateningly at the men, emitting loud snarls as it did so. The cattle began running in all directions, scattering in fright. One of the men raised his rifle at the man-beast and fired, hitting him in the shoulder. Screaming, the monster fled off into the tim- ber, eluding the men, whose horses could not be made to pursue the creature. It could be heard screaming in the distance, crashing its way up through mountainside scrub. During 1895, two government geologists established a camp near Tumut, while on a survey for minerals in the Snowy Mountains. Late one night prior to sleeping, the men saw some- thing like a dingo moving around the outskirts of the camp illumi- nated by the glow from the campfire. One of the men fired a shot- gun at the "thing", at which it adopted an upright stance upon two legs and scrambled into the bush. It was still emitting blood-cur- dling screams as it faded into the distance. The men stayed up all night, piling logs on the fire with guns at the ready, in fear of the creature's return. The next morning they found traces of blood and tracks near the camp. This incident has parallels with another which took place a few years before World War I, in the mountains behind Buggan Buggan. An aboriginal couple, Big Charlie and his wife, were dri- ving an wagonet through rugged bushland when they were sud- denly attacked, by what they described as a strong man-like hairy beast. Both escaped, bleeding, with a profusion of wounds. Sightings persist throughout the Australian Alps to the present day. During July 1975 a group of skiers near Mount Kosciusko, saw a large hairy ape-like creature at least 2.6m to 3m tall moving up a snow covered mountainside. The Blue Mountains have their own fair share of "historic" Yowie sightings. By the 1870s, coal and shale miners had entered the rugged Jameison Valley, cutting a railway line from the base of Katoomba Falls several kilometers out to the Ruined Castle rock formation, where a settlement was established for the mining of the extensive kerosene shale deposits there. It did not take long for the miners to become aware of the ‘hairy man’. During 1875 a miner, Mr. J.H. Campbell, was exploring scrub- land on the western slope of the "Castle", far below the tunneling operations, when he sighted what he later described as a hairy 2m tall, man-like ape-like animal moving through the scrub about 100m ahead of him, and seemingly oblivious to his presence. Mr Campbell, picking up a strong piece of tree limb for protection, stalked the hairy beast for half a kilometer before the strange crea- ture eluded him. Moving further north to the Kempsey district, to the west of the town rises the imposing, vast, and foreboding Carrai Range, the scene of many eerie happenings involving the Yowie since the 1840s. How early pioneers were able to penetrate this "green hell" was beyond me, when I first led an expedition into the region in 1979. Yet our hardy pioneers had done exactly that. As early as 1842 they had reached the Carrai Plateau to establish farms, now long vanished with the advancing jungle. It was not long before the settlers began finding strange foot- prints around the creeks where they took their cattle to drink. That same year children of the settlers were frightened by a tall hairy man-like beast who came towards them from out of nearby scrub one day as they sat playing in a clearing, forcing them to flee. Some days later the strange beast was seen again near cattle and was pursued by cattlemen, but it eluded them in the dense jungle. In 1848, at least two of the hairy man-beasts were seen on sep- arate occasions by cattlemen. On the second occasion, the cattle- men pursued the beast up a mountainside where they appeared to have it trapped. But before they could shoot it, the creature climbed down a cliffside to disappear into deep forest. Still further north, in the spring of 1892, five year old Rebecca O'Halloran went missing while playing on a grassy hillside near her parent's farm outside Torrington, north of Emmaville. Some toys were left on the ground but the child was nowhere to be seen when the parents began searching. They feared she had wandered off into the surrounding scrub. Soon neighbouring farmers were joining in a search for the child until darkness prevented further searching. However the next morning searchers saw the child up in a rock shelter atop a 6.6m high cliff. When rescued, she told the men that a "big hairy man" had picked her up and carried her (at least 5km from home), and when night approached, he had lifted her up the cliff and into the rock shelter where he left her and did not return. Searchers eventually tracked the unseen monster into a valley where they found huge footprints in the soil, but these tracks van- ished when the beast moved into rocky terrain, never to return. The foregoing ‘historical’ Yowie reports are but a few of many from my collection. Modern archaelogical dating techniques demonstrate that our aborigines have occupied Australia for at least 50,000 years, and evidence is coming to light of even earlier stone-age people have preceded them! Obviously some of these people where giants. Many people in modern times claim to have seen hairy giant man-like (and woman-like) creatures in the Australian bush. In Part II of this article (next issue of Nexus), we will examine some of these claims, and the findings of large man-beast foot- prints in remote wilderness areas, as the Yowie Mystery continues. NEXUS - 25 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 1991 * YEAR BOOK