Ape-Men in Australia by Rex Gilroy Copyright (c) 2001 Rex Gilroy. This article is composed of extracts from my 2001 Yowie book: “Giants From the Dreamtime” -The Yowie in Myth and Reality. Copyright (c) 2001 Rex Gilroy, Uru Publications.

[Released in March, 2001, click here for Ordering Details]

The Australian Yowie Story

Yowies in Australia
Man-Apes of Eastern Australia

Excerpts From Chapter 16 Mysterious Australia 1995 - Rex Gilroy Parts 1-13

Click at End of each Article for Parts 2-16

Part 14-16 Is The Updated Version From the 2001 Yowie Book
" Giants From The Dreamtime - The Yowie in Myth & Reality."

Part 11

My wife Heather and I have made several expeditions to the Lamington region, following numerous letters and phone calls from people who have had some often terrifying experiences in this jungle wilderness. A farmer, "Doug", had experienced some very eerie happenings on his Numinbah Valley property. He had found giant footprints and heard weird cries at night. In 1969 he was working in a field one day when he saw, some distance away, a three-metre-tall, hairy manbeast walking across the field carrying a dead calf. Grabbing his .303 rifle, he fired at the monster as it effortlessly cleared a wooden paling fence in a single stride and escaped into rainforest.

In another incident a few years earlier in the Tweed Valley, a stockman, Richard Adams, was mustering a mob of cattle on horseback when the cattle and his horse suddenly took fright. It was at this moment that, barely 16 metres ahead of him, an enormous, muscular, hairy manlike creature appeared menacingly, brandishing a large tree limb. The snarling beast, whose face Richard later described as being somewhere between human and ape, stood its ground as the terrified stockman turned his mount to gallop off down the slope.

And in the same region, around 1935, residents of an isolated farm were startled by the frantic bellowing of their house cow one dark night. Their cattle dog, immediately let out of the house, attacked something but suddenly let out an agonising yelp-then all was quiet. The farmer and one of his farmhands went out armed with lanterns and guns. They found the corner fences down, the cow dead with a broken neck, its head almost tom off, and the dog crushed against a tree where it had been thrown. In the distance they could hear something crashing through the bush up the mountainside.

A search next day failed to explain what had killed the animals. However, many neighbouring farmers believed it was the work of the "Monster Men of the Lamington Plateau". Aborigines refuse to enter these valleys for fear of the horrible man-beasts they believe still lurk there. Over the years, people have disappeared without trace in these wilds. Eerie cries are often heard at night, terrifying campers.

Early in 1990 Heather and I searched an area in the Numinbah Valley below Binna Burra where, during November 1989, three campers-Terry and Max Feitz and Barry Bossley-found several large footprints, measuring 45 cm long by 18 cm wide, embedded 2 cm deep in mud on a creek bank. Similarly, at Beechmont, two other campers, Ken White and Jerry Moore, claim they saw a two-and-a-half-metre tall, hairy man-beast squatting to drink at a creek-edge in dense scrub.

Our investigation then switched to Durum Creek. One night in August 1978, Len Rowe and his wife Glenda were camped by this creek. when they were woken by a loud splashing sound 20 metres away down the creek. They caught sight of an enormous dark shape disappearing into the jungle, accompanied by sounds of crashing foliage. They then detected a foul stench about the area. This strong stench turns up repeatedly in sightings reports, and, as I have already pointed out, appears to be a worldwide occurrence in regard to the yeti, Bigfoot, and so on.

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. In 1988 in the same region, two campers, John Chambers and Russell Bradden, saw a two-metre-tall hairy female creature as she grubbed for roots on all fours in the forest soil. Disturbed by the men, she arose and escaped into the jungle. The men described her as having a receding forehead, long arms and long pendulous breasts.

Shortly after our departure for home in March 1990, a businessman/fossicker, Craig Turner, stopped by a creek in the Numinbah Valley. Leaving his car to walk along the bank amid surrounding rainforest, he found several large footprints embedded up to four centimetres deep in mud. Spaced one-and-a-half metres apart, the footprints measured 40 cm in length by 17 cm width across the toes. After obtaining plaster from a nearby town, he made casts of left and right feet from the best tracks and later gave us copies. The significance of these footprints has already been discussed.

From a study of their casts I am impressed by Australian man-beast footprints found from widely-scattered, remote mountainous locations, often hundreds of kilometres apart and which display identical physical features. The tracks are often found by some bushwalker who has chanced to go off the beaten track into areas never frequented by most people. A hoaxer would be wasting his time planting fake tracks in such areas where nobody is going to find them. Some of these tracks have been found in virtually inaccessible forest regions by sheer chance and, in my view, must therefore be accepted as authentic yowie footprints.

The rugged eastern mountain ranges of Queensland, extending from the Lamington Plateau and McPherson Ranges of the south-eastern border country all the way up to Cape York, still contain many vast regions of inaccessible forest country, seldom if ever visited by man. It is from these high, imposing, rainforest-covered peaks and deep valleys-the fringes of which only hardy timber-cutters and other bushmen dare to penetrate-that eerie stories of mysterious hairy manlike giants have been emerging since the early years of European settlement of this state last century.

Although traditions of yowie sightings in Queensland are statewide, we shall now confine ourselves to those stories from the northern regions of the state. Old-timers of the Tully district early this century used to warn travellers not to enter the Cardwell Range, inland from the town, because of the "great hairy men" that roamed the mountain country thereabouts.

Further south, and north of Townsville on the coast, lies the town of Innisfail, many of whose inhabitants for the past 100 years or so have believed in the "Milla Milla Monster"-giant hairy hominids that Aborigines and early settlers alike believed inhabited the rainforests and mountains of the region. The 'hairy men' of the Innisfail district have been known collectively as the Milla Milla Monster since the many reports of their activities that were rife last century.

During January 1990, two campers found huge footprints of one of these monstrous man-beasts near Milla Milla, for a time reviving many of the old stories. Earlier, in July 1973, Innisfail residents were alarmed when Bill Towns, a bushwalker, and "Mark, a mate, sighted a group of primitive-looking hominids comprising a small male, a larger seven-foot male as well as a small female and a larger, seven-foot female, moving through a rainforest late one afternoon. This is what happened in Bill's own words.

'We were hiking through forest on the edge of a sugar-cane field above an embankment next to a creek. Mark suddenly stopped me. 'Quick, ahead of you,' he said. "There was something moving in the bushes near us next to the track. Then, barely a few feet away, a large hairy male creature emerged onto the track, pushing aside the foliage on either side of it as it did so.

'We were terrified and stood fixed to the spot as the creature, a seven-foot male with large genitals visible, looked at us then slid down the embankment and into the creek. As it stood in the creek it let out a loud howling sound towards the forest behind us. "As he did so, a smaller male appeared of about five-foot (1.2 m) height, and then a female of about seven feet (2.3 m), and a smaller five-foot female, all of whom assembled on the opposite bank of the creek, looked up at us, then ran off up the bank and into forest cover. The adult and smaller males then re-appeared and began screeching at us.

My now we were looking about us for some large pieces of wood with which to defend ourselves. The big muscular male was by now screeching all the more and shaking a tree with rage. He then dashed back along the creek towards us, and we ran off in terror. However, he may have only wanted to frighten us off, as he did not climb the embankment."

Click here for Part 12 of Man-Apes of Eastern Australia

Excerpts From Chapter 16 Mysterious Australia 1995 - Rex Gilroy Parts 1-13