Giants From the Dreamtime the Yowie In Myth And Reality

Scottsdale District 1953

Several huge five-toed Footprints

The Scottsdale district was one of these no-go areas in the old times, I am told by Mr Joe Grant now of Melbourne, but for many years a backpacker in the north-east forests. In 1989 he told me the following story: "I was camping out in the scrub north of Scottsdale one week in January 1953.

I was filling my water canteen in a creek when I suddenly found embedded a couple of inches deep in the sand right next to me, a huge five-toed footprint. Several more were nearby and they couldn't have been more than a day old. They measured about 40 cm in length by about 17 cm in width."

"There were signs that the maker of the footprints had squatted down to drink at the water's edge." "I felt distinctly uneasy and left the place just as soon as I could, for I figured that, if the feet impressions were genuine, the bloke that made them was much bigger than my 5 ft 10 in height, and might still be lurking not very far away!"

"A few years later I got talking to a mate, Dave Hill, in Launceston. He was raised in the bush and knew a lot about the north-east wilderness. He'd seen a 'tiger' thereabouts on one occasion in the '40s' and when I told him about the footprints he said there were a few more similar reports from that area."

"He had heard that an 8 ft tall blackish-brown, long-haired 'apeman' had been claimed seen by campers in the bush outside Derby to the east of Scottsdale in 1949. This incident, he said, for a time revived old bushmen's yarns of the district; like one that happened back in 1893, when a timber cutter was supposed to have been grabbed from behind by one of these creatures, while he was resting on a log outside his isolated hut.

He beat off his attacker - a 7 ft tall hairy, muscular brute - with a spare axe handle he managed to grab, and escaped with bruises and scratches; resulting he claimed, from the grip of the man-beast's strong arms and hands with long, dirty fingernails."

Penamba Range-Sawarak Region 1953

Hairy man Ape

In the Penamba Range of the Sarawak region in 1953, a "(ft tall [2.75m] hairy man-ape" terrified a young hunter on a bush track. The youth fired his .22 rifle at the 'manimal' but 'it' kept coming at him. At this the hunter, now the 'hunted' took to his heels. Having escaped, he afterwards reported his experience to a plantation owner, who told him that "nothing short of a .303 would have dropped the monster"!