Giants From the Dreamtime the Yowie In Myth And Reality

Wentworth Falls 1988

Fossil human Foot

One day in July 1988, Mr Jean Paul Buvet, then of Wentworth Falls, in the Blue Mountains east of Katoomba, stumbled upon a remarkable fossil while walking along a bush track near his home. A strangely shaped lump of red ironstone, he soon realised it to be an almost perfectly formed human foot, the size of a six year old child. Anthropologist Mr Jim Specht of the Australian Museum Sydney, later identified it as an endocast that had taken at least 200,000 years to form.

However, Professor of Prehistory, Richard Wright, of Sydney University was more sceptical. He was unable to bring himself to accept it as a human foot, on the grounds that, being an ironstone specimen it would have to be "millions of years old". "Therefore I think it most unlikely that it is a human foot", he told a reporter from the Blue Mountains Echo newspaper.

[Note: ironstone endocasting takes a least twice as long as limestone, which also suggests the Katoomba ironstone cranium may be far older than the age suggested by Dr Harold Webber].

Local Aborigines had another explanation for the endocast. It belonged, they believed, to the 'Gubri Man', or perhaps his wife, the 'Hoori Woman', who inhabited a large rock shelter at Frog Hollow, Katoomba. The creatures, they claimed, roamed the Blue Mountains in the long-ago 'dream-time'. They were cannibalistic, feeding upon any Aborigines unfortunate enough to be caught by them.

They were very hairy, brutish looking people, who lived upon roots and berries, but also hunted animals. They could often be seen at their Frog Hollow shelter, cutting up their prey with crude, jagged stones, uttering strange grunts to one another, and would emit loud howling sounds at any Aborigines seen spying on them. Their description certainly fits the image of Homo erectus.

Bombala District 1988

Tall hairy ape-like, man-like Creature

Even in recent times there have been reports of Yowie activity in the Bombala district. During July 1988 a farmer sighted a tall hairy ape-like, man-like creature late one afternoon near his property on the Bombala River, and in August 1988 large footprints were found on the river bank.

Bombala District 1988

Monkey-like Man

In April, 1988, an outing of the Haverkamp family of Brisbane was disrupted one afternoon, when the children playing in bushes below the western slope of the lookout were terrified when they came face-to-face with a "monkey-like man, all covered with hair", who had been standing watching them amid a tangle of vines and foliage.

When they ran screaming up the slope to their parents, the strange creature quickly vanished into the jungle. It is an eerie place, this "Best of all Lookout". Visitors have spoken afterwards of having heard strange sounds and had the feeling of being watched, and on west misty days, the encroaching forest and tangling vines that drape along the track, can create an all too 'spooky' feeling for anyone to remain there very long.

Having walked this track myself and experienced strange sounds, and that unsettling feeling of being watched by 'something' from the forest depths, I have to agree.

Mt Woodroffe 1988

Freshly made small Footprints

Last century western Victoria Aborigines believed that a crinkly black-haired, 3-4m [.9m to about 1.2m] tall pygmy race, the Net-Net, the "small hairy ones", inhabited the mountain ranges across a wide area, stretching far into South Australia.

These obvious survivors of the old Tasmanian race were or are still, claimed to inhabit the desert fringes and remote ranges, where they live a secretive existence. Renewed speculation on the mystery was revived in 1988, when freshly made small footprints were found by cattlemen at a waterhole near Mt Woodroffe, in the Musgrave Ranges.

Aboriginal stockmen present at the time left the scene and refused to return. "The Net-Net bring bad luck if you see them,' they claimed. The Net-Net apparently once spread across the continent in ice-age times when the interior was far more habitable than now; with vast waterways, forests and pasturelands, where now only desert prevails. They spread into Western Australia, where we shall next meet the "small hairy ones".