Giants From the Dreamtime the Yowie In Myth And Reality

Musgrave Ranges 1947

Narragun Killed

In 1947 a group of Aboriginal stockmen south of Victoria Downs [Northern Territory] on the South Australian side of the border, on a cattle track in the Musgrave Ranges, spotted a 4m tall Narragun observing their cattle mustering activities from among trees.

The men pursued the beast into a dry creek bed, where they emptied their rifles into the creature. They were afraid to speak of the incident for some days. Finally in company of several white stockmen they returned to the scene of the shooting. The body was gone. Drag marks showed it had been removed, presumably by one or more of its own kind.

Elders later took the young men to task, saying the creature should not have been harmed. It is just one of many 'bushman's yarns' told along the dusty cattle tracks of Australia's desolate interior. Yarns? Even so, Aboriginal and also white stockmen believe them and keep close to their fire at night, guns at the ready, alert to every sound that might suggest the approach of a hairy shape from out of the darkness.