Giants From the Dreamtime the Yowie In Myth And Reality

Carrai Foothills 1965

8ft hairy man-like Beast

The story is still recalled of when, in 1965, a husband and wife left their remote farm near the Carrai foothills to drive to Kempsey for shopping. Their 15-year old daughter was left alone to do housework in their absence. She had tidied up about the house and was in the backyard feeding chickens when the family dog, chained up near the house, began to bark furiously, then cringe and 'crawl' inside its kennel.

Suddenly feeling that something was behind her, the girl turned, dropping the bag of chicken-feed she was holding, and screamed in terror. There, standing several feet from her and towering over her frail five-foot height was an enormous, hairy manlike beast, a good eight feet tall. It showed a ferocious look in its eyes, which she later recalled were set deep inside big eyebrows. Large teeth showed from its snarling mouth.

The beast moved towards her, but the girl, although terrified, regained her senses enough to turn and rush up the back-door steps into the house, slamming and bolting the the door as she did so. For some minutes, she later recalled, the beast seemed to pace around the house emitting a loud grunting noise, then all went silent.

She was beside herself with terror by the time her parents returned a couple of hours later, and although she could describe exactly what she had seen to her parents, and later to police, nobody in authority took any action. No search was organised to attempt to track the mysterious intruder due to the vastness of the nearby forest.

The Carrai is a mysterious, eerie, foreboding place in which few people dare to camp at overnight. Weird cries from the forest depths, and the sounds of twigs snapping underfoot as mysterious upright-walking creatures move about in the forest, have all too often terrified campers who have sometimes caught a glimpse of some huge hominid from watching them from the trees illuminated in the campfire glow.

Lamington Cliffs, Numinbah Valley 1965

Hairy ape-like Giant

In 1965, a group of mountain-climbers were moving through a rainforest at the base of a Lamington cliff face in Numinbah Valley when they spotted what they later claimed was a "three- metre-tall, hairy ape-like giant" clambering over boulders, leaving behind an overpowering, rotting, animal-like-stench.

Lamington Cliffs, Numinbah Valley 1965-Related in 1979

Manbeast

In 1979 a Mr Brian Cook wrote to me of an experience he had 14 years before in 1965: "After reading an article in 'People Magazine' dated 16th August, 1979 on the "Great Australian Yowie Hunt", which told of your lifetime's dedication to this mystery I thought I would write to you.

I know its very true because I have seen the same kind of creature. In Carnarvon 14 years ago my brother and a mate together with myself, all teenagers, were walking along the side of a hill and at the bottom was a small creek. I saw it first - it had just come out of the water because its hair was all hanging straight down and dripping. I never saw its face as it lay with its back to us."

"I waved my brother and our mate over and they started to panic. I was also pushing a truck tyre at the time and aimed it straight down the hill at the creature. I don't know if the tyre hit the manbeast as we had by then begun running for home."

"A truck driver a few days later reported in a newspaper that he had seen what must have been the same creature just out ow town one night as it crossed a road into dense scrub. For a while locals were wary about going into the bush hereabouts for fear they might meet up with the 'hairy man'."

Papua New Guinea 1965

Female Mabi

In another startling incident, claimed by natives to have taken place in the Mt Hagen region, but which was not reported until some years after the event, about 1965 a 1.8m tall female Mabi is said to have been captured by hunters and held captive in their village, where she eventually gave birth to a male child of one of the men.

As he grew older the boy looked completely unlike a normal human. He died of some disease about 1973. The beast woman had however long since wandered off into the bush never to return.