The Yowie Mystery - Living Fossils from the Dreamtime.

Copyright © 2007 by Rex Gilroy
All rights reserved
First Edition

Rex and Heather Gilroy are recognised internationally as Australia’s foremost relict hominid researchers. This book celebrates Rex Gilroy’s 50 years as the ‘father’ of Yowie research. Rex and Heather are also recognised internationally as one of the world’s foremost husband and wife research teams in the field of ‘Unexplained’ mysteries.

These daring and outspoken researchers are no friends of the Australian hard-core, narrow-minded scientific establishment, who would prefer that books of the kind produced by the Gilroys were prevented from publication.

When not carrying out field work, Rex and his wife Heather [a Registered Nurse/Midwife by profession] are at home writing books, surrounded by their huge reference library of books on all manner of scientific subjects. Besides their many and varied researches, Rex and Heather Gilroy are also involved in community service work as members of the Rotary Club of Katoomba.

Dead Horse Gap, near Thredbo. This wild region of the Snowy Mountains has been a “hairy man” locale since the first years of 19th century settlement hereabouts.

During June 1999 a stockman was riding his horse through wild scrub overlooking the road near where this photo was taken, when he spotted a number of “huge man-like footprints” in a mud patch.

Photo copyright © Rex Gilroy 2007

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BEYOND AUSTRALIA – MANBEASTS OF MELANESIA AND NEW ZEALAND

Old native tales from India through island south-east Asia to New Guinea and it’s Melanesian island neighbours, including those of the Maori of New Zealand, speak of other primitive beings with whom they shared these lands, when all were part of a great ‘bridge’ or land shelf joined to mainland Asia.

Australia, as we know, was joined to New Guinea at this time. As the authors have already pointed out earlier in this book, this vast shelf was flooded by rising seas at the close of the last great Ice-Age, to create the island chains of today. This great Ice-Age event is recorded in the oral traditions of all these people, which speak of ‘hairy’ giants and other hominid beings who survived the deluge on widely-scattered islands.

For example, among the survivors of the great submergence in Indian folklore, are the cavemen known as Guhyaka who are the servants of the giant God Kubera. Here in myth is a race-memory of a race of primitive Stone-Age cave-dwelling people and giants.

Another cave-dweller was Hidimba, an Asura, or demon cannibal who lived in the forest, where ‘he’ lured people into his bone cave to eat them.

A similar Stone-Age demon was Jambha, meaning ‘jaws’. He was killed by Vishnu.

Indians also believe in the Kala-Nukha, or ‘Black-face’. These are a race of wilderness-dwellers who resemble humans.

There are also the Kirata, a race of primitive people believed to inhabit the mountain forests north and east of the great plains of India. They can live in the water and eat raw fish – which implied they fish from watercraft.

Another race of beings are dwarfs – ie pygmies – called the Nandisha. They had monkey-like faces so appear to be a primitive ape-man type form. They were brown in hair colour.

Women must beware of the Pishacha, or Paisacha, a race of evil spirits of the land who are “the most vicious creatures on earth”. They embrace sleeping women in huts [ie kidnap them]. They love human flesh and even have a primitive language all their own. Their women are called the Pishachi and they too are very vicious towards ordinary humans.

There is also a race of aborigines called the Pulinda, who inhabit the wooded hills of India and whose features are similar to Australia’s Aboriginal people.

There was the female demon Taraka, who lived in a forest near the Ganges River. Here this demoness devoured all travellers. Rama and Lakshmana [Rama’s brother], finally killed her. This sounds like a female Stone-Age individual similar to the Paisacha. Kim-Purusha, meaning “What Man?” is an ‘indescribable’ man, a low type of animal-like being who inhabits the forests of India. Another race of the forests that feeds upon human flesh, they are the size of ordinary humans.

Kotavi, “A naked woman”, is yet another forest demon. She is a mystical goddess who roams the forests in search of human flesh: in other words, she is a female hominid.

There is also the Kuvera. In the Vedas ‘he’ is an evil being, ‘spirits’ of primitive appearance who hug the shadows, the darker parts of the forest, hiding in wait of human prey.

Soldiers fighting the Japanese army in Burma during World War Two, more than a few times reported sightings of hairy, ape-like creatures, up to almost twice the height of a normal human and very muscular. Similar experiences were not unknown from both opposing sides during the Vietnam War.

Such hairy giants are also known to ancient Japanese traditions.

Burma is also the home of nightmarish beings called the ‘Kung-tu’ or ‘Mouth Man’. They are monsters of gorilla-like appearance standing 20ft [6.1m] tall, of powerful build, weighing 1000lb, it is claimed by villagers, who have traditions of these monsters having terrorised the land for untold centuries.

Rex Gilroy
Australian Yowie Research Centre,
Katoomba, NSW
Monday 25th June 2007