Giants From the Dreamtime the Yowie In Myth And Reality

Wingham April 1993

Giant sized-man/ape-like Footprints

Further down the coast from Kempsey lies Taree, and inland, the wild mountainous country of thee Barrington and Woko National Parks. In April 1993 a farmer found a number of giant-sized, man/ape-like footprints on his Manning River-bank property at Wingham, inland from Taree. Measuring 40 cm long by 17 cm wide, they were spaced about 1.5 metre's apart.

The man-beast who made them would have easily have stood 2.6 m tall. I am interested in the Wingham footprints for they match others found in March 1990 in the Numinbah Valley, inland from the Queensland Gold Coast and close to the New South Wales border.

These in turn match others found in the Kanangra Boyd National Park and also others found some years ago in the Cooma district of the Snowy Mountains.

Christmas Creek District 1993

Mineralised Skull

Then, on the afternoon of Monday 16th August 1993, while on a field trip to central Qld, with Heather and our daughter Michelle, we happened to be investigating a dry creek bed in the Christmas Creek district. Protruding from hard packed gravels I spotted a large, 10cm thick flattish brown ironstone slab. As there seemed to be something unusual about it I dislodged it.

To my amazement I found it to be the mineralised skull of a creature more hominoid than hominid in appearance, crushed flat by geological pressure in the course of the long fossilisation process, suggesting it had once been buried at some depth beneath heavy overlying gravels.

O'Rielly's Guesthouse & Lamington Plateau 1993

Small stone Tools

During two searches in the jungle-covered O'Rielly's Guesthouse area carried out by Heather and I in 1993 and 1994, I recovered a number of small stone tools of these pygmy Aborigines, and also at the foot of the Lamington Plateau at a site formerly part of a rain forest that had been cleared in recent years.

In both cases these tools were comparatively recent; those from the base of the plateau being no more than around 40 years old, while those found on the Lamington Plateau in the vicinity of O'Rielly's could not have been more than 10 years old, and even more recent specimens have been found by bushwalkers and campers supporting the claims of others to have seen some of these little folk roaming in this vast wilderness in recent years.

Wandandian Mountain Range 1993

Womanbeast

A few days before Christmas 1993, a 2m tall "womanbeast" was reported seen by two bushwalkers, as she foraged for berries and other herbivorous food in a remote patch of scrub, deep in the range.

Pilliga Township1993

Giant size Footprints

In April 1993 a stockman found three sets of giant-size footprints embedded in creek mud near Pilliga township.

Pilliga Scrub 1993

Tall female Hominid

There have been in recent years a number of hairy man-like creature sightings reported in the Pilliga Scrub north of Coonabarabran in recent years, and in June 1993 a 2m tall female hominid was claimed seen drinking on all fours at a remote waterhole.

Many stories concern the vast stretch of Pilliga scrub though which passes the Newell Highway between Coonabarabran and Narrabri. Many truckies refuse to pull over to sleep on that eerie stretch at night, for fear of attacks by the creatures. Their fears are not entirely unjustified.

There have been some quite believable accounts; of dark, hairy man-ape shapes seen by resting drivers on moonlight nights; of one or more of these nocturnal hominids seen wandering across the deserted road; and other, more terrifying reports, such as the truckie who woke up one night to find a hairy face peering at him through his closed driver's window.

The Pilliga stretch of the Newell Highway without doubt becomes an eerie place once the darkness falls.

Shennongjia China 1943-1993

Wild Man

In the spring of 1943, one Zhang Yujin was with a party of soldiers, who shot a 'Wild Man' in the Shennongjia district. A second, possibly a female escaped. When the soldiers examined the dead Chi-Chi, they found it to be as tall as a human being, the whole body being covered in dark red hair. The palms of its hands and soles of its feet were covered with thick white calluses, while the fingers and toes had pointed nails, Zhang Yujin said later.

Crude stone Tools

In this same district, 50 years later, in 1993 a recently abandoned campfire was discovered by peasants, from around which they retrieved a number of crude stone tools. Some Chinese researchers believe these primitive fire-making hominids are surviving remnant populations of the Chinese Homo erectus, Beijing [formerly Peking] Man, and if so, these hominids are undoubtedly close relatives to the fire and stone tool-making "hairy people" of Australia.