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During the last 840,000 years, hundreds of similar tsunamis Maybe one day we'll discover the truth about our little hairy must have occurred as well as tens of thousands of cyclones and friends—and maybe we never will. All we can do for the moment other cataclysmic weather events. It is therefore tempting to is keep our cameras handy while in areas noted for sightings, and speculate that while some Homo erectus stayed on Flores, others keep our junjudee file—and our minds—open. oo blundered southward to Australia. While their stay-at-home cousins shrank on tiny Flores, they, finding themselves on a Endnotes gigantic island continent teeming with lumbering megafauna, may 1. Northern Miner, Charters Towers, 23 February 1979; Daily have greatly increased in size (as another relation, Homo Bulletin, Townsville, 5 March 1979. heidelbergensis, did on the Asian mainland”). Hundreds of | 2. Gerry Bostock interview with Tony Healy, 27 January 2005. thousands of years later, some Homo floresiensis may have 3. Ron Heron, "The Dreamtime to the Present, Aboriginal followed them. Perspectives" (MS), College of Indigenous Australian Peoples, On their own arrival in Australia about 60,000 years ago, the Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW, 1991, pp. 42-43. ancestors of modern Aborigines would therefore have encountered 4. Macleay Argus, 6 January 1977. both types of hairy man: the "big fellas" that they came to know 5. Aldo Massola, Bunjil's Cave: Myths, Legends and by many names including yowie and dulagarl, and the "little fellas" Superstitions of the Aborigines of South-East Australia, that they knew as junjudee, njmbin, etc. At first, all three species | Lansdowne Press, Melbourne, 1968. may have coexisted quite happily. 6. Frank Povah, You Kids, Count Your Shadows — Hairymen and Over several millennia, however, the Aborigines colonised her Aboriginal folklore in New South Wales, Wollar, NSW, every part of Australia. The 1990. introduction of dingoes 3,000 to 7. Macleay Argus, 10 February 1977 4,000 years ago and the use of the 8. Mark Pope interview by Paul dogs in hunting may have given Cropper, 30 January 2000. Aborigines a great advantage over H. 9. South Burnett Times , 2 October erectus and H. floresiensis. Conflict Maybe one day we'll lor. Coast Chronicle, 4, 5, 10 would have been inevitable. A » Praser Coast Chronicie, &, 0, After centuries of skirmishing with discover the truth about veomuary oe interview by T their technologically superior our little hairy friends— Healy, April 3000. erview by Tony neighbours, the hairy men, greatly A a reduced in numbers, may have and maybe we never will. 12. The Courier-Mail, Brisbane, 29 January 1994. 13. John Pinkney, Great Australian Mysteries, The Five Mile Press, Victoria, 2003, p. 32. : wo 14. Correspondence from Les yowies and junjudees are descended Holland to Gary Opit, 11 August 1999. tron! Homo een is this: Pott A. eres and ft foresiensis 15. Macleay Argus, 4 and 18 September 1976; Sun-Herald, used stone tools and apparently fire. Could both the "big fellas Sydney, 12 September 1976. and the "little fellas" have lost or abandoned all their technology 16. Nature, vol. 431, pp. 1055 and 1087; New Scientist, 30 upon arrival in Australia? Such a scenario isn't entirely October 2004; Richard Freeman, "For fear of little men", Animals implausible. In both cases the original immigrants are likely to & Men, no. 35, pp. 19-20; The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 have arrived clinging to storm-driven debris. Perhaps only isolated December 2004 pp. 1-2; National Geographic November 2005. couples or very small groups—maybe even groups consisting only 17, Although not quite yowie-size, one Homo erectus of children—were swept ashore. A lot can happen in 500,000 descendant, Homo heidelbergensis, which flourished for years Orso. _ . ; . millennia in Europe and Asia, stood six feet tall on average and The Tasmanian Aborigines, isolated for 12,000 years since the was more muscular than modern humans. H. heidelbergensis is last ice age and numbering fewer than 8,000, also lost almost all of sometimes referred to as "Goliath". their technology. In The Future Eaters,'* Dr Tim Flannery 18, Tim Flannery, The Future Eaters, Reed New Holland, mentions that the Tasmanians had forgotten how to make fire, Sydney, 1994, pp. 264-270. according to renorts of the first Furoneans ta encounter them Tf a retreated to the places where it is easiest to hide: the deep forests and rugged mountains. One problem with the notion that Maybe one day we'll discover the truth about our little hairy friends—and maybe we never will. All we can do for the moment is keep our cameras handy while in areas noted for sightings, and keep our junjudee file—and our minds—open. oo Maybe one day we'll discover the truth about years or so. The Tasmanian Aborigines, isolated for 12,000 years since the last ice age and numbering fewer than 8,000, also lost almost all of their technology. In The Future Eaters,’* Dr Tim Flannery mentions that the Tasmanians had forgotten how to make fire, according to reports of the first Europeans to encounter them. Ifa group's fire became extinguished, its members had no option but to eat raw meat until they managed to locate another whose fire sticks were still burning. Subsequent excavations of Tasmanian campsites revealed other strange things: while bone tools including awls and needles were in common use 7,000 years ago, their use slowly dwindled until, 3,500 years later, they had ceased to be used at all. The knowledge of how to make hafted axes, boomerangs and spear-throwers was also lost. But while it is entertaining to speculate about the relationship of H. erectus to H. floresiensis, their possible travels eastward and southward from Flores and their possible relationship to both the yowie and the junjudee, the fact remains that not a single bone or tooth of either creature has yet been found anywhere in Australia. So the question remains unanswered as to whether the junjudee is related to the yowie or whether it exists at all. About the Authors : Tony Healy and Paul Cropper have been researching yowies and mystery animals in Australia since the mid-1970s. Since 1981, they have collaborated on many projects, including their book Out of the Shadows - Mystery Animals of Australia (lronBark, Panmacmillan, 1994, ISBN 0-3302-7499-6; reviewed in NEXUS 2/23). Their new book, The Yowie: In Search of Australia's Bigfoot, is published by Strange Nation in Australia (ISBN 9-7806- 4646-9645) and Anomalist Books in the UK and USA; it's available from Mackay's Bookshop, Sydney (email mackays@netspace.net.au), and Amazon.com; see review this issue. This article is based on material included in chapters five and seven of The Yowie. For more details, visit the authors’ website http://www. yowiefile.com. 62 = NEXUS APRIL — MAY 2007 our little hairy friends— and maybe we never will. www.nexusmagazine.com