Giants From the Dreamtime the Yowie In Myth And Reality

Don Boyd Ruined Catle Formation 1998

Yowie Investigation

My last happy memory of Don is the image of him standing upright, precariously upon the tallest pinnacle of the Ruined Castle rock formation in Jamieson Valley below Katoomba NSW during our last [October 1998] Yowie investigation together with Geoff and Evan. Don [who told no one of his battle with cancer] thought nothing of heights anymore than he thought nothing of upsetting the establishment. Well done old mate!.

Kanagra Boyd National Park 1998

Huge fossil Footprint

On December 9th 1998 in the company of my friends and fellow researchers, Andrew Leese and Erik Spinney, while searching cliffs overlooking a deep gully, I stumbled upon the largest fossil footprint discovery in this area to date.

As with all the other giant and normal size hominid foot impressions fossilised hereabouts, the maker had walked through cooled volcanic ash and mud, leaving an impression measuring an astounding 68 cm long by 50 cm wide across the toes, 31 cm wide at the mid-foot and 27 cm wide across the heel, being embedded 14 cm deep in the rock.

A right foot, the big toe impression measures 10 cm long by 8 cm wide, the others measuring between 6 and 7 cm in length and between 7 and 11 cm in width. Even allowing for distortion in the originally soft ash and mud, the giant who left this massive impression would easily have stood around 4 m high and been of powerful build!

Geological evidence shows that at the time of the foot's impression the gully below did not exist and the area was a vast swampland. With the creation of the gully, any further foot impressions left by the giant hominid have vanished with the sands of time.

Soon after the initial giant hominid fossil footprint discoveries I uncovered the fossil 'trackway' of a single creature, consisting of seven normal human-size footprints, extending on the former shoreline of a swamp for a distance of 3 m from north to south. Varying in length, width and depth, due to distortion when made, the impressions range from 25 cm to 33 cm in length by 11 to 16 cm in width and up to 12 cm in depth.

As an experiment, I placed my bare feet upon these tracks and attempted to walk in the same manner as suggested by the varying distances between each foot impression. The fossil 'trackway' foot pattern is as follows: the left foot [beginning northern end] was squashed 9 cm deep in the ash as the right foot was brought around at a squashed angle 2 cm deep and 25 cm in front of it.

Then the left foot was bought out of the ash, its next impression narrowed and 12 cm deep as the ash closed in. The distance between the feet is 25 cm at this point. Then the left foot was brought forward, 36 cm past the right [which is only 2 cm deep probably due to immediate filling in]. The right foot was then brought 40 cm in front of the left [again only 2 cm deep].

At this point the left foot was brought around to a point 55 cm left of the last left foot impression and 38 cm left of the right foot above it, but to its right. This foot impression is 2 cm deep. It is also 22 cm to the left of the right foot impression.

With the left foot 2 cm deep here, and at an awkward angle, the hominid appears to be stooped, as if turning to look around it, as 'it' hastens to flee the swamp, its tracks surviving to preserve what appears to have been a 12 seconds or so record of prehistoric flight, perhaps from some danger which can now only be guessed at. But just how old are all these footprints?

According to geologists, the volcanic deposits that cover the Kanangra Boyd National Park, were laid down during Pliocene times around 3 million years ago! If the geologists are correct, primitive ancestors of modern humans were present in Australia at the same time similar hominids were roaming Africa!

And, as suggested by the giant hominid foot impressions, these normal height human-like creatures shared the landscape with at least two forms of giants; one an ape-like, possible Gigantopithecine, the other a more human-like race; beings of between 3 and 4 metres in height and of immense strength.

Central Coast 1998

Large man-shaped Creature

It would appear that the 'Rakataks' still inhabit remote areas of the Central Coast. Consider the following two 'close encounters of the Yowie kind', experienced at the same bushland location by my friend and fellow field researcher, Andrew Leese and myself on separate occasions.

I quote from Andrew's own report he prepared for me: On the night of Wednesday 22nd July 1998 around 10.30pm, after he had dropped off his wife Wendy at a friends house in Kariong, he drove off in his 4-wheel drive vehicle for a planned overnight camp at a clearing, reached via a muddy track and adjacent to dense bush country outside the town, on his way back to their Blue Mountains home. With him was Zero, the family's pet black poodle.

"I arrived at the clearing, parked and let Zero out of the car to go to the toilet. Whilst he was sniffing around I decided to arrange the back of the car for sleeping. Suddenly Zero started barking and took off into the bush as if after something. I thought it must have been just a kangaroo, so I let him go." "After about a minute of continuous, really aggressive barking [which is totally out of character for Zero] I called him but he didn't return, but still kept barking.

Because it was pretty late and overcast I couldn't see how far away he was, so I decided to go into the bush after him."

I'd only gone about 20 feet [6.1 m] when zero came bolting past me with his tail between his legs, yelping. I started to follow him back to the car when I saw him jump into the driver' side, but I wanted to know what had run so I turned around and took about five steps and I stopped dead in my tracks. I had the most intense feeling of being watched."

"Being an intrepid camper, of course I didn't have a torch on me but did have a box of matches, so I took out some matches and lit a few all at once to get a brighter light. After my eyes adjusted I took a few more steps forward peering into the gloom, and that's when I saw 'it'." "Not 8 feet [2.45 m] in front of me stood a large man-shaped creature looking straight at me. And when I say looking, he was looking down at me. He must have been a good 2 feet [60 cm] taller than me and I am slightly over 6 feet [1.8 m] tall.

In the few seconds that the matches lasted I made out a few facial features that I could see, which were his very human eyes, but squashed nose; I didn't make out a mouth as he seemed to have a longish, reddish strangly beard, which covered it and which with the hair on his head and also the long, matted fur-like hair that was on his shoulders and chest, and which was about 6 inches [15cm] long in places. It was too dark to see the rest of him."

"I have never felt such an intense feeling of foreboding, it was as if I could feel an intense surge of anger at my being there. My one and only feeling was to flee, at which point the matches burnt my fingers and went out. I turned and ran for the car, jumped in and slammed that door shut behind me.""Zero was obviously as scared as I was as he'd urinated on the seat, where he was still cowering with his tail between his legs. The one thought that was going through my head was that I shouldn't be there and should leave immediately."

"I drove out or there as fast as the muddy track would let me,. all the time hoping that nothing was going to step out in front of me on the way out. Needless to say I didn't camp in the bush that night, but in my friends driveway instead. It was quite obvious that what was down there did not want me or anybody around at that time."

There have been many similar experiences to that of Andrew reported to me from this region over the years, and Aboriginal rock engravings thousands of years old depicting the 'Rakatak' "Hairy man" are still to be found upon rock ledges around the Central Coast district.

Orangey-brown long-haired Sighting

It was almost a year after Andrew and Zero had their experience that , while on an archaeological field investigation in the Kariong district, I happened to visit this same location with field assistants Fred From and Greg Foster, on Thursday 15th June 2000. We were examining Aboriginal rock art, when I happened to stray from the others, following a rock ledge onto an extensive area of sandstone shoals bearing further rock art. This spot is surrounded by dense bush below a rise.

The time was 2.23pm when I glanced at my watch. The sun had sunk behind the trees on the rise ahead of me. It was at this very moment that, about 15 metres ahead of me, I observed an orangey-brown long-haired arm and portion of the right side of a body, moving quickly, silently across an opening in the foliage, outlined in the back lighting of the sun, to vanish behind a large tree trunk. The sighting had occurred in less than 2-4 seconds.

For a moment I wondered if I had perhaps just seen a cow or horse, yet whatever it was it had made no sound, and despite the bracken covering the ground and the dense scrub, there was not even the sound of snapping twigs. I wondered if it was a hiker exploring the scrub. Then, as I stood there still wondering what it could have been, I spotted about 15 metres away an orangey-brown, hairy hominid-looking creature, observing me from another opening in the foliage.

The figure was only partly visible, with the sunlight behind obscuring the facial features. The figure was visible only from the waist up, the arms being held out from the body, the hands hidden behind the bushes. As with my first sighting moments before, the creature vanished silently into the scrub within seconds, leaving me rather shaken by my experience.

I estimated the hominid to have been about 1.5 metres in height. Quickly alerting my companions, we searched the spot for any signs of the creature. There were no signs of footprints at the spots I had seen it due to the undergrowth of twigs , leafmould and sandstone rubble covering the area, and no evidence of freshly broken saplings were to be found, despite a thorough search of the scrub thereabouts.

How that creatures had been able to move about in that scrub without making a sound gave me an eerie feeling, and I was glad to leave the area. This had been my third "close encounter" with a Yowie the other two having occurred in the Jamieson Valley below Katoomba, in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, in 1970 and 1979 as already described in Chapter Ten.

Local Aborigines also believed in the former existence of another "hairy man" of gigantuan proportions who roamed an area stretching from the Central Coast far inland up the Hawkesbury-Colo Rivers, where there exist rock engraving and cave paintings of this giant being. Datrumenus was held in such awe that he was regarded as the supreme being by these tribespeople.

Te Anau Downs 1998

Homo erectus Implements

Earlier, during our May-June 1996 New Zealand field investigation, at a point just north of the west coast town of Ross in South Island, Heather and I found, protruding from ancient stratas nearby a long dried-up inlet about 1km in from the ocean, four crude implements, consisting of a large, 28cm wide by 16.5cm long chopping tool, together with another 11cm by 10cm chopper; a 9.5cm by 9.5cm bone smashing pebble tool, and a hand-axe measuring 10.5cm wide by 14.8cm long.

I recognised these implements as being identical to Homo erectus examples found by me in the New England district of northern NSW. Three days later Heather and I found other former occupation sites of this Homo erectus-type people in the Te Anau Downs, containing primitive choppers, scraping, cutting and bone-smashing tools; all of which showed these people had roamed the edges of the former glaciers, following the Moa food chain.

Further Homo erectus "dawn tools" were discovered on the edge of an extinct ice-age lake at Tongariro National Park during our 1998 New Zealand field investigation. But just how old are these finds? The Ross site has been dated to the 7th Glacial Period of the New Zealand ice-age, making these tools up to 150,000 years old; the same age as the Mt Tongariro finds.

However, the Te Anau occupation sites, whose tools appear much older and cruder than those found elsewhere, are believed to date from the 5th Glacial and 4th Inter-Glacial Periods; that is, somewhere between 350,000-400,000 years BP [Before Present]. Earlier occupation sites containing eoliths in the Te Anau-Milford region may date to even earlier times, perhaps up to 500,000 years BP.

Not all stone tools recovered of New Zealand's lost races are ancient. During our September 1998 New Zealand field search at Milford Sound I found several, freshly-made scraping, chopping and other tools. Were they the work of the mysterious "White tribe" of the Fiordlands?

Early sealers and other European seafarers who landed along the Fiordland Coast between the 1790's and 1820's, frequently claimed to have sighted strange white-skinned natives, often in large groups, camping and fishing along the shores and who quickly retreated into the scrub as longboats approached.