Giants
From the Dreamtime the Yowie In Myth And Reality
Lake
Ballard, Kalgoorlie 1960
Three
Jimbra's
During 1970
I interviewed an old fossicker from Adelaide who, about 1960, in the
company of another mate had experienced a meeting with a Jimbra family
that they would be most unlikely to forget. Andy Hoad and
his mate Brett Taylor left their wives for a couple of days' prospecting
out from Kalgoorlie where they all lived at the time. The men used a
tin hut up in the Lake Ballard area to the north. Andy's story follows:
"We had just arrived, and unpacked our truck this particular weekend
when we noticed a bad, rotting-type smell about the shed. No dead animal
anywhere in sight, so we wondered what had caused the stink. "We went
off later with our equipment to work a favourite location on a dried-up
creek bank always good for gemstones there. Anyway, my mate soon got
the feeling we were being watched.
He
kept on looking over his shoulder, and soon even I got the same uneasy
feeling. "There
was a stand of scrub further along the creek and it was from here we
suddenly heard voices-gutteral sounds is a better description. Looking
over in that direction, we could see dark shapes moving in the tree
cover. Thinking it
was people, Brett called out 'who's there?', at which a seven-foot,
dark brownish-haired, long-breasted female 'ape' emerged, standing in
a stooped upright position, to be joined by a younger female of about
six feet. then, to our further horror, a huge nine-foot male appeared.
The nearest
creature you could compare them with would probably be the gorilla.
"We had no firearms, only our picks and shovels for protection.
regaining our composure, we kept the picks and ran back along the creek.
Ahead of us were the sounds of crashing and screeching tin sheeting,
and we knew something was happening to our hut.
In the distance we could see another hairy gorilla-like monster, about
10 feet in height, pulling our roof and walls apart. The building was
not all that sturdy so it was easy for the creature to dismantle most
of it.
"We were
not being pursued but hid in scrub, waiting for the chance to dash to
the truck. The manlike
'ape' soon strode away and we made good our opportunity to escape. "Aborigines
in Kalgoorlie later told us we should never have been there, for it
was the territory of the Jimbra, huge hairy animal-men who have inhabited
the land since the Dreamtime. You know, we never did go back there."