Giants From the Dreamtime the Yowie In Myth And Reality

Cudgegon River-Mudgee 1997

Homo erectus Skull find

In February 1972, while fossicking on the Cudgegong River bank outside the central western NSW town of Mudgee, I spotted an oddly-shaped fossil impression on a small ironstone lump, cemented in a deposit of conglomerate. Digging it out I found the impression to be that of a human palate with dental arch, measuring 6 cm, the teeth marks clearly visible beneath the 1 cm high palate.

Twenty-five years later, in June 1997, while again fossicking along the same river barely 5 km from the town, I chanced to find the 3m high bank of a long-vanished creek that once flowed into the river. Here, protruding from conglomerate at the base of the old bank, I spotted what turned out to be a mineralised partially intact, primitive human skull. Once removed, I found it lacked the right eyebrow ridge and facial section, there was no lower jaw, the remaining bones all having turned to limestone.

Much of the skull cap was missing, exposing internal mudstone filling, but the cranium's shape allowing for some distortion, was doliocephalic with a very low forehead. The left eyebrow ridge was very prominent with the facial section below the eye socket present, if a little distorted, to about the area of the palate. Allowing for some distortion due to the skull having been crushed on its right side [through ages of pressure from overlying sediments], the remaining fossil measures 21 cm long across the cranium, by 11.5 cm wide and 17 cm deep.

Its shape was unmistakable and from the moment I first held it in my hands, I realised it was the skull of a Homo erectus; a male or female hominid of at least 1.5 m in height. Geological evidence suggests over 100,000 years of conglomerate sediment had covered the skull since it's fossilisation. As the mineralisation process takes up to 250,000 years, the Mudgee Homo erectus skull is certainly of some antiquity; perhaps around the 400,000 years estimate of Dr Cherfas for Homo erectus' Australian entry.

It therefore seems certain that, at present this is the oldest fossil hominid skull so far unearthed in Australia, and concerning the subject of this book it is also important for another reason. According to old Aboriginal tales of the Mudgee district, the 'hairy people', or Yowies, once inhabited the banks of the Cudgegong River. The Aboriginal tribes hereabouts lived in constant fear of these primitive creatures, for they often raided aboriginal camps, even stealing lubras on occasions.

However, eventually the tribesmen banded together and attacked and killed many of them, until the 'hairy people' were finally driven out of the area. As the Mudgee Homo erectus skull was retrieved from an area where traditions say the 'hairy people' once lived, I believe that, at last I have physical proof of the Yowie's existence, for it seems certain that Homo erectus was the origin of the Yowie mystery. That Homo erectus and the Yowie are one and the same is a valid argument.

The traditional, average human height of most reliable Yowie reports from pioneer days to the present certainly fit the known height of Homo erectus based upon fossil remains. There are of course, since pioneering days, accounts of a taller variety, perhaps suggesting the parallel existence of a larger form of Homo erectus in Australia; and then there are those reports of a truly more ape-like creature, which may or may not be a still-living form of the giant man-like ape, Gigantopithecus, and which would have crossed the former land-bridge from south-east Asia at a remote period.

Mt Cook Area 1997

Human foot Impression

During a field investigation in New Zealand, in September 1997 in the Mt Cook area of South Island, at the base of the mountain near "The Hermitage', I found a large human foot impression in a mudstone shoal. It measured 36cm long by 13cm wide across the toes, 12cm wide at mid foot and 9cm across the heel.

Later, near the turn-off to Mt Cook, while fossicking near the road, I chanced to stumble upon a second, through smaller, mudstone-preserved fossil human foot impression. This measures 22.5cm long by 14.5cm across the toes, 11cm wide at mid-foot and 10cm across the heel.