Giants
From the Dreamtime the Yowie In Myth And Reality 
Tully
1937
Five
very small Blacks
In January 1982,
I received the following letter from Mr Jim West of Grafton NSW: "In 1937
I was on the track just travelling all over the country as were a lot
of others during the depression. I was with two other blokes, a chap
by the name of Bob Marshall and another bloke named Bluey Fowler.
He was supposed
to have been brought up by the blacks up in the Cape York Peninsula
area.
He could hunt
like no man I've ever seen, he knew exactly where to get them.
We were up at
Tully, collected our rations and were just sitting around the town;
the police got onto us and told us to move on. That was common practice
in those days, we were doing no wrong. So we went up the river a few
miles and made camp.
We had two push
bikes between the three of us, we used them to strap our swags on the
bikes and push them along.
We were at this camp for about five days,
every now and again this Bluey fowler used to say we are "being
watched, there is someone around. I feel eyes on us", he said.
One morning
we were sitting around the camp when, just out of nowhere I looked up
and there were five very small blacks about 1 to 1.6 metres in height,
and they had spears in their hands.
Three of them
came within 4-5 metres of where we were sitting, the other two stood
about 3-4 metres behind them looking very hard at us and the bikes seemed
to fascinate them.
Bob Marshall
used to do a bit of engraving with needles. He used to engrave anyone's
name on a tobacco tin, he used to charge 1/- or 2/- for his work, whatever
he could get. The three of us had one of them.
After the natives
had been standing there for two or three minutes Bluey Fowler held his
tobacco tin out towards them making an offer for them to take a smoke,
but they made no move, so after a while he tossed the tin over to where
they were standing.
They stood for
a few seconds, then one of them picked the tin up, looked hard at it,
then placed it under his arm pit. While all this was going on Bob Marshall
slipped the old rifle we had out from beneath the bunk we made up. He
handed it to me as I was supposed to have been the best shot with the
rifle out of the three of us.
I just laid
it across my legs, while sitting down. I cocked it and was just waiting
for something to happen. The next instant they were gone, just scampered
back into the bush.
After they were
gone we made a joke of Bluey losing his tin of tobacco. He told us that
the black who had picked it up would keep it until he died. I asked
how he came by that information. He said:"When the black placed
the tin of tobacco under his arm pit, it meant he liked it very much
and it was 'his' for good".
The round Capstan
tin was engraved with the name 'Bluey;' on the bottom of the tin with
a scrawl under the name and a small heart on top of the name, and probably
the date".
Gravesend
District 1938
Hairy
Man
In 1938 on a
property called "Malvern" in the Gravesend district, situated
on Slaughterhouse Creek, a 'hairy man' was often reported seen and whose
appearance became so frequent thereabouts that the locals came up with
a pet name for him :the "Wizy Wazy". He was said to be man-sized
and had a covering of long, light coloured hair.
