Forward 
This book is the result of many years of painstaking research. It has not been easy to write, for its subject matter is as complex as it is diverse. According to Anthropologists, anatomically modern humans have existed for at least 35,000 years. Our earlier primitive forefathers are supposed to have died out; or did they? Is it really possible that, in widely-scattered, remote mountainous and forest-covered regions of the world largely inaccessible to modern humans, relict hominid ancestors from the dawn of human prehistory still roam our planet?
That is the theme of this book. However, as we are primarily concerned with 'relict hominids' reported from the Australasian region, our search will be primarily confined to South-east Asia, Australia, New guinea, some Melanesian islands and New Zealand; all of which I will argue later, were in ice-age times part of one great land shelf connected with south-east Asia to the Asian mainland, and which would have permitted migrations of primitive hominid populations out of Asia and down into Australasia, at a vastly earlier period than the scientific community is at present willing to accept.
I make no apologies for the 'heretical' theories postulated in this book, for I believe the time has come in the wake of the mounting evidence worldwide, for scientists to reconsider the traditional picture of our ancient past, and the first appearance of Man or near-Man on the Australian continent. While it has been "politically correct" in recent years to regard our Aboriginal people as the "first Australians", I maintain, on the basis of a growing mass of archaeological evidence, that they were preceded on this continent by a number of far earlier stone-age races. However, this evidence is largely ignored and 'swept under the mat' of scientific conformitism, in a most unscientific manner.
Yet just because some fossil or artifact is not recognised in the scientific literature there is no reason to disregard it out of hand, rather these scientists should learn to keep more open and receptive minds to any startling new discoveries or theories concerning our stone-age past. I have written this book with the layman in mind, and in easy to follow layman's language. For rather than waste my time attempting to convince the narrow-minded conservative scientific community on the existence of primitive relict hominids in our vast wilderness, I prefer to present my case to the average, more open-minded, thinking, Australian, encouraging others to investigate the matters for themselves.
I am a 'stirrer' and make no secret of it. I enjoy encouraging a fresh approach to the study of our prehistory. For unlike, the conservative scientist who erects his hypothesis a few centimetres in front of him, I prefer to erect mine 10km down the road, for I see the possibilities much further ahead than most people. I can fully appreciate why the scientific community with few exceptions, ignores the available evidence for the existence of the Yowie/yeti/Bigfoot. After all, they are cautious men and women, and are reluctant to investigate this, or any other subject for which there is little or no physical evidence. And yet, the history of science, as we have seen, is full of great discoveries made by investigators who scorned such caution. Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Heinrich Schliemann, Albert Einstein and LSB Leakey to name but a few.
This book is not just confined to sightings claims of Yowies and his Pacific Islands cousins. It is also a scientific approach to the mystery, in which the most up-to-date archaeological and anthropological evidence concerning Aboriginal and pre Aboriginal occupation of Australia will be presented. The very suggestion that Australia might posses remains of an "Old Stone-age" past to rival that of Africa, Europe and Asia will not be even remotely entertained by the typical and understandably cautious university palaeoanthropologist and archaeologist. However, we are fortunate to live in an age when most of the frontiers of scientific knowledge has been extended further than anyone once thought possible. The wonderful advances in space exploration, medical science and the technological revolution, once the subject of science fiction are but three aspects of the new age. Once 'impossible' possibilities are now scientific fact.
I said 'most' because there still remain neglected areas in great need of a thorough scientific investigation, and the relict hominid mystery is one of them. It stands next to unidentified Flying Objects (UFO's) and Atlantis in scientific scorn. Yet, if circumstantial evidence is enough to convict a person in a court of law, then surely the vast amount of circumstantial evidence for the Yowie and other relict hominids worldwide is enough to prove their existence. My lifetime's investigation of the Yowie mystery convinces me of that. Sceptical university-based anthropologists demand physical evidence for the modern day existence of relict hominids. Now, at last, in the case of the Yowie mystery at least, such evidence may have been found, as will be seen in the course of this book.
In unravelling the Yowie mystery the new evidence to be presented helps us to separate fact from fiction and reveal the true identity of the Yowie. For, as the reader will learn from the evidence presented in this book, the Yowie has been collectively confused with more than one normal to gigantic size hominid race in Australian Aboriginal "dream-time" tradition. This therefore, is not a book about the Himalayan 'Yeti' or American 'Bigfoot' although their existence will be touched upon whenever necessary. After all, there have already been countless books and magazine articles (mostly american) written about these mystery hominids, while the existence of the Yowie remains largely unknown outside Australia. It is sincerely hoped by the author that this book, the first of its kind, will finally fill that gap.
For, I shall demonstrate that the Yowie, far from being a mere mythical 'Bunyip' of Aboriginal folklore, is an integral part of Australia's stone-age past, and bound up with races of man and near-men known to have roamed the earth in remote ice-age times. It is in some ways a catalogue of 'impossible' possibilities, hundreds of them. The only trouble is, they have all happened, or at least are supposed to have happened. In the course of writing this book it has often been difficult to separate the seemingly authentic modern-day sightings reports from those of hoaxers. Possible Yowie sightings reports are only as good as the people who claim to have experienced them, thus public scepticism is understandable.
The situation has not been assisted by the all too often "tongue-in-cheek" approach by the Australian media, thus making many people reluctant to come forward with information for fear of public ridicule. Yet as the 'historic' period of early settlers tales will show, there was a time when such reports were treated in a matter of fact way, and are therefore far more acceptable to the researcher. Very few of these can be said to contain the kind of sensational embellishments that are all too commonplace today. Even if only a small percentage of modern-day Yowie sightings reports and physical descriptions are genuine, they are enough to warrant a proper scientific investigation of the phenomenon.
Once scientists involved in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, and other related scientific disciplines go in search of fossil remains and other evidence of these primitive hominids, the physical proof necessary for scientific acceptance will inevitably come to light. As I have already suggested, and now prepose to demonstrate, some of that fossil evidence already exists.
