| Bigfoot Encounters Four Yowie Articles |
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© SUNDAY MAIL (QLD), 13 JUN 1993 "Big
Foot sets foot in the Rainforests" STORIES are rife in Far North Queensland that the Yowie or Big Foot may be alive and well in the towering World Heritage rainforest. Charlie Bochow, of Julatten, owns a shack on Mount Spurgeon, behind Mossman. About 5km past his isolated rainforest retreat he discovered strange footprints. Mr. Bochow and his son were inspecting an abandoned bulldozer when they noticed huge footmarks with four toes and what appeared to be a claw extending from them. "We couldn't believe our eyes -- the footprints went from the creek to the dozer," Mr. Bochow said. Forestry worker Alfred Morris, of Ravenshoe, recalls the encounter he had on the Windsor plateau behind Mount Molloy in 1983. "I was up in the scrub and it was late in the afternoon when I heard a cough and a roar-type noise," he said. "It was real eerie. The scrub went really quiet. You could have heard a leaf drop. The last time I heard a noise like that was in a circus. I've never heard it before in the bush and I've never heard it since." Mrs. Claire Noble, of Tully, said there had been a number of sightings in the area during the past 30 years. People who have seen them say they are six or seven feet tall, smell like stale urine and make a screaming noise. Next Article: © Townsville Bulletin MON 23 APR 2001 - "Crew heads to `hot spot' in yowie search" YOWIE hunters said they were grappling with an ethical dilemma as they prepared to set out on an expedition to capture one of the elusive creatures on video. Australian Yowie Research spokesman Dean Harrison said yesterday it could be morally wrong to reveal the creatures and their whereabouts. But he said the film project "could also add weight to the argument that logging in their known habitats was endangering them". The Brisbane-based businessman was preparing to lead an expedition into a southeast Queensland state forest to film a yowie, said to be a hairy, powerful ape-like creature."We have a team of 24 in Operation Rotation which begins on April 26 and ends on May 4," Mr. Harrison said. He said the group, which included five people with military tracking experience, would camp on a rotational basis in the state forest northwest of Esk. "That's the hot spot for yowies. We've had so many sightings from reliable witnesses,'" he said. "Our information is that a least two clans or families of yowies live in the area.'" Next Article: © Townsville Bulletin - 17 AUG 2000 - "Deep in yowie territory" By John Andersen 'When the SAS sergeant returned he handed in a patrol report and a sketch of something he had seen, a sniper he presumed, while laying silent and still in his camouflaged hideaway on top of the ridge.' HANDS UP ALL you who have seen a yowie? Look at all the hands come up around Tully. Yes, quite a few folks from Tully way have seen the hairy man. A learned archaeologist from up that way told me just the other day that there was in fact talk of a hairy woman raiding fruit farms in the Murray Upper valley. And it wasn't some hippy chick with armpit hair down to her toe rings. It was a yowie sheila who happened to have a taste for mandarins. Who knows? In yowie land she might be super model material, a regular Naomi Campbell who gets to go on dates to a different waterfall every night with some of the biggest names in the rainforest. Seriously, why is it, you may well ask, that so many people from Tully and its environs have seen the hairy man. No, it isn't because they've puffing away on the "leccy lucerne". Everyone knows there's none of that stuff around Tully. It's because the mountains up behind Tully which run just about all the way to Cooktown are tailor-made for yowies -- inaccessible, plentiful food, water and cover. No one goes there. No one, except maybe the SAS. Jirrabel elder Ernie Grant says his father, brother and nephew came face-to-face with a yowie in scrub alongside Davidson Creek not far south of Tully way back in 1956. This is the same vicinity as the old Tully River Station which was taken up and developed by King Ranch of America. Work started in 1963, using bulldozers with huge scrub pulling chains strung between them, clearing thousands and thousands of hectares of virgin rainforest. The bulldozer drivers at the time spoke of seeing gunyahs made from grass and leaves. The gunyahs turned to dust under the weight of the chains. They saw the short rainforest Aborigines running from the roaring machines that were bringing their world to an end. These were the Negrito or rainforest-dwelling Aborigines and they fled deeper and deeper into the mountains, away from the machines and the sounds of crashing trees. After listening to stories told to him for the last 15 years by his Aboriginal patients, Innisfail medical practitioner Dr Rod Catton is convinced the hairy man exists. Aboriginal people have told him they can smell the hairy man. His own theory is that the hairy man is arboreal, living in the canopy where he can't be seen. (Does this remind you of Predator)? Dr Catton has collected a wealth of stories. Accounts of pig dogs, terrified, running back to their masters, yelping with fear, their tails between their legs. These are dogs with brains the size of caraway seeds. They are so dumb they fear nothing. What is it they've seen in the rainforest that makes them tremble? A yowie? If not a yowie, perhaps a marsupial wolf, panther or lion? We've got them, too, apparently. One of the most convincing yowie stories I've heard comes from Tom Floyd, a former instructor at the the Land Command Battle School at Tully and now a corporate trainer, based in Townsville. It was in early 1987 and they were running a course for Special Air Service soldiers. Tom sent one guy, a sergeant, up on to a ridge where he had to maintain an observation post (OP) looking down into the upper reaches of Liverpool Creek. This was in the middle of nowhere, right up in the ranges, deep in the jungle. He stayed there in the same position, looking down into this top section of Liverpool Creek for three days. It had taken him three days to walk into the OP. "His job was to observe enemy movement," Tom said. What Tom hadn't told the sergeant was that there would be no enemy movement because no "enemy" had been sent into the area. The sergeant was entirely on his own. When the SAS sergeant returned he handed in a patrol report and a sketch of something he had seen, a sniper he presumed, while lying silent and still in his camouflaged hideaway on top of the ridge. In the Australian military the special suits worn by snipers to break up their silhouette and to provide camouflage is a called a "yowie suit". He told Tom when he returned he had only seen one person the entire time he was on the ridge. He said the only person he saw was a sniper in a yowie suit. Tom told the sergeant
there was no else there. That he was alone. No one else had been sent
into the area. What he had seen was not a sniper in a yowie suit. There
were no snipers, no soldiers, no "enemy" anywhere near that
ridge or along Liverpool Creek. The sergeant had been entirely on his
own. The SAS sergeant, taking it all in, looked down at his sketch and
said "this is what I saw". This was in 1987. © SUNDAY TIMES - SUN
29 AUG 1999 "HEY, YOWIE, TAKE COVER" Next Article: © SUNDAY MAIL (QLD) SUN 05 SEP 1999 "Yowie zap plan fizzles" By Simon Kearney AN AUDACIOUS plan to hunt for the legendary ape-like bush creature, the yowie, has been dashed -- by Customs officials. They have refused American Big Foot hunter Larry Lesh permission to import stun guns for the expedition. "No jurisdiction in Australia allows such weapons," a Customs spokesman said. Mr. Lesh was hoping to track down and catch a yowie -- the Australian cousin to North America's Big Foot -- which is believed to live along the Great Dividing Range. "The idea was to close within 21 feet (6.4m) of a yowie and shoot," Mr. Lesh said. "Twin barbs would penetrate the yowie's skin and then 50,000 volts would bring him down. "A couple of plastic riot cuffs for the wrists and feet and you've just captured a yowie." A Gold Coast yowie hunter says what's really needed to hunt the elusive creature is night-vision cameras. "That's the equipment we need to get the evidence,'' said Dean Harrison, who claims to have come face to face with a yowie near Beenleigh in 1997. "It roared like a bear and a lion in one," he said. "It had a vocal capacity no human could match." The most recent sighting was at Springbrook in July where the beast was blamed for the death of some horses. Mr. Harrison said he wanted to arrange an expedition in the Blue Mountains this month, using night-vision equipment to record images. Asian exotic animal specialist at the Australian National University Dr Helmut Loofs-Wissowa said there was evidence of similar creatures in Asia and called on the skeptics to prove they did not exist. But ANU colleague,
human evolutionist Dr Alan Thorne, disagreed. "I'd be perfectly happy
to cuddle a yowie if you show me one," he said. "I'm not convinced
because we don't have the evidence." Portions of
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