This and the next chapter will concern itself with an overview of the Australian relict hominid
mystery. And as this book is principally concerned with material evidence pointing to the true
identity of these primitive beings, the authors will once more draw upon fossil and artefact evidence,
backed up in some cases by ancient Aboriginal traditions, to demonstrate yet again the Homo erectus
identity of these hominids both past and present.
In our first book on the Yowie mystery, “Giants from the Dreamtime – the Yowie in Myth and
Reality” [URU Publications 2001] every Australian state was covered. That book [always available from
URU Publications] presents a mass of evidence leaving no doubt as to the Homo erectus identity of the
Yowie, and this was backed up at the time by the authors’ growing collection of fossil skull-types and
other remains of Australian Homo erectus.
Yet each year that passes sees our collection grow through
the results of our continuing field researches, so that the book now in the reader’s hands presents an
up-to-date review of our latest important skull-type discoveries.
In many parts of Australia where we have uncovered numbers of crude eoliths, or many fossil
hominid footprints, we have often afterwards learnt from local Aboriginal myths and legends that ‘hairy
people’ once inhabited the particular region.
This is especially so in the case of our fossil skull-types,
which have been recovered from areas that, according to local Aboriginal traditions, were or still are,
habitats of the Yowies.
Lately the Blue Mountains west of Sydney has revealed more fossil hominid [principally Homo
erectus] skull-types than any other part of Australia in which we have searched. These finds, together
with the overwhelming mass of crude eoliths and fossil footprints, surely demonstrates that this vast
region was well populated by Homo erectus in the past and from the great many modern day sightings
it appears that the Homo erectus/Yowie continues to survive in the forest depths of this often
impenetrable wilderness terrain.
There are of course other regions of the vast, eastern Australian mountain ranges where fossil
footprints, large numbers of eoliths, and sometimes fossil skulls, back up modern day relict hominid
encounter reports, such as in the Snowy Mountains, Wadbilliga and Deua National Parks [southern
New South Wales; the mountain ranges of the Hunter district, Kempsey, Coffs Harbour districts and
New England region up to the border ranges. The coastal ranges of Queensland’s far north into the
Atherton Range and Gulf Country also hold more of the aforementioned evidence, backed up by a
wealth of modern day encounter claims.
There can be no doubt that the great bulk of “hairy man”’ traditions, both Aboriginal and early
European; modern day sightings claims and the fossil/stone tool evidence for the former and present
existence of the Yowie, come from the eastern Australian mountain ranges. This has to be expected
when we take into account that this part of Australia retained much of its moisture and forest
environment towards the close of the Pleistocene period, while the rest of the landmass, particularly the
formerly lush interior, dried up in an ecological disaster which saw the disappearance of much of the
Pleistocene animal and bird fauna.
For the hominid population, which by then included Australoids,
migration to the well-watered coastal regions became a necessity, unless of course some populations
were able to adapt to their new environment as in the case of hardy Australoids. Those populations
which moved into the eastern Australian mountain ranges found plentiful game, vegetable foods and
water.
This environment remains largely unchanged today, so that relict groups of Homo erectus-the
Yowie should, as we believe they do, continue to survive, in remote, little if ever penetrated [by modern
humans] mountainous forest-covered regions.
Rex Gilroy
Australian Yowie Research Centre,
Katoomba, NSW
Monday 25th June 2007
