Over a wide are of the Blue Mountains west of Sydney New South Wales, for many years numbers
of recently-flaked, crude stone implements have been found by campers who have penetrated
remote, out-of-the-way valleys and forest country of this vast, mysterious region.
Conservative scientists who have been shown them have dismissed them out-of-hand as ‘fakes’
or ‘natural’ stones shaped by nature.
This attitude among our supposed ‘investigative’ university-based
so-called ‘experts’ is of course far from new, yet their attitude becomes all the more bewildering to the
authors, who have in the course of our expeditions into the bush, come across many recently-manufactured
implements, in the form of simple cutting and scraping tools, bone-smashing and
chopping implements which, when compared to Homo erectus examples, to us leave no doubt as to
the identity of their makers.
Sometimes these tools have been found in rock overhangs around long-abandoned campfires,
weeks or months, even perhaps a few years old, which leaves us with but one conclusion; namely that
the Yowie/Homo erectus still roams the vast Blue Mountains wilderness.
Of course recently-manufactured crude Homo erectus-type stone tools have been recovered
elsewhere beyond the Blue Mountains.
Heather and I, assisted by our south coast New South Wales
field assistants and friends, Antji and Allan Westrip, who have taken us deep into the ranges in their
four-wheel drive vehicle, has resulted in us not only uncovering recently-made megatools of ‘Rexbeast’,
but also examples of Homo erectus-type cutting, chopping and scraping tools which, when found on
the forest floor of the Wadbilliga wilderness, have often given the appearance of having only laid where
we found them for a few weeks.
I have uncovered others under similar circumstances in the Nundle State Forest, south-east of
Tamworth, in the New England district, in dense scrub along the edges of deep gullies that lead
eastwards into some of the most impenetrable mountainous forestlands of the eastern Australian
mountain ranges. They have also been recovered by us at various locations in the Far North Queensland mountain ranges. It is therefore apparent that Yowies/Homo erectines continue to survive
and it seems, in reasonable numbers, in remote regions of the eastern Australian mountains ranges,
moving about at will and free of unwanted [modern] human interference.
It is only when some of these “dawn hominids” have for one reason or another, strayed from
their usual habitats to emerge on the fringes of modern civilisation that they have been seen.
And what
are their habitats?
These have to be isolated regions of wilderness as already stated, but being primitive
hunter-gatherers, constantly on the move from one rock shelter to another, wherever native animal and
herbivorous food is available, and of course water, they are more likely to choose rock shelters close to
remote creeks.
We are of course speaking of family groups, perhaps more than one, moving about together.
Wherever they temporarily establish themselves, their immediate concerns are to construct shelters if
rock overhangs are unavailable. These shelters would be similar to the Aboriginal gunyas; that is slabs
of bark cut from large tree trunks and placed over crude frameworks of saplings. Such open campsites
are said to have been stumbled upon by modern human campers in the past, apparently abandoned
perhaps days or weeks before.
Of course rock shelters in the form of long, deep overhangs are
traditionally linked to Stone-Age hominids worldwide, and we now know a lot more about the
domestic life of Homo erectus and his campsites in rock shelters thanks to the work of archaeologists,
who have built up a very accurate picture of the daily lives of the erectines from food and other
remains excavated at these sites.
Fire was all-important and would have been one of the first tasks for any group establishing
themselves at a new campsite. Homo erectus is credited with having been the inventor of fire. This was
a giant leap forward in the history of Man for it was to benefit future civilisation in so many ways, such
as the smelting of metals which led us on to a technology which is leading us to the stars. Yet to the
Homo erectines its first and foremost importance was in the cooking of meat and as a provider of
warmth on cold winter days and nights.
Rex Gilroy
Australian Yowie Research Centre,
Katoomba, NSW
Monday 25th June 2007
