Nerang Sate Forest encounter

[Malster72]

About 17 years ago I had a strange experience in the Nerang State Forest (QLD) which is part of the Gold Coast Hinterland. I was 19 years old and lived on a couple of acres along Castle Hill Dr. I had lived there since 1976 age 4 and spent many years walking or riding push bikes in the forest while growing up. One day I took a German Sheppard we had for a walk into the forest as I often did. There was a firebreak track right behind our house that went steeply down into the valley and up to the next ridge and so on. I had walked these tracks many times and even once on a neighbours horse. On this particular day I began walking down the track with our dog and thought I was hearing my foot steps twice but the sound was of breaking under growth not the crunching of dirt under my feet. The steps were almost matching the same as mine. At first I though it was a roo moving through the bush but they generally travelled faster and I knew the sound they made. This was different. The crunching sound was too heavy and too deliberate for a roo.

At this stage I became very curious and as I went to take another step, I deliberately stopped my foot contacting the ground and stopped completely. I heard one loud crunching footstep in the bush and then quiet apart from my dog whimpering behind me. I wanted to check it out but as I turned to my dog to get it to follow, it looked terrified and the hairs on its neck were standing up. The dog turned half around to head back up the track and was looking at me in a pleading way (if that makes sense) and making a whining, wimpering sound. This was extremely unusual behaviour for this dog which had taken on any animals it had tangled with without any self restraint or fear. I had never seen that dog behave like this and I started to feel fear and could feel the hairs raise on the back of my own neck. At that point I decided to go back up the track and the dogs mood changed completely.

I believe it may have been a sasquatch due the 1. the deliberate heavy human like foot steps 2. the unusual fearful behaviour of the dog 3. It doubt it was a person as the dog had a history of running at strangers and bailing them up. 4. The time lag between footsteps was inconsistent with any small or larger creatures that live in that area. 5. The foot steps were comparable to a stalking/hunting activity.

I believe in the existence of such creatures and this event I have never forgotten. My older brother had a similar experience a few years earlier while walking at dusk from the Nerang township through the forest to our house. He had run home and had said he had heard heavy footsteps in the forest as though he was being stalked. I haven't lived there since the early 1990's but still think about it wondering what I would have experienced if I had of continued down the track. It still kind of haunts me sometimes.

I am very interested to hear your view point as I have rarely, if ever had any opportunity to get any serious discussion from people on the topic.

[Tish]

I've had a couple of similar experiences where I'm sure I've heard the double foot prints, but the dogs the big one. When your dog is ususally pulling like crazy to get a head and suddenly backs up terrified it's a good sign that you should follow suit and leave the area post haste.

[Malster72]

I was looking at the google satellite maps of the area and their is a corridor of dense bushland with a few thinner areas running from oxenford right through into NSW. They could easily travel without being seen and only having to cross the odd road.

I also lived at Pimpama on the eastern side of the Pacific Motorway for a few years from about 1998 until 2004. I was startled one night by a very load bone chilling howl from across the farmland areas where the bushland was fairly thick. I saw an American tv special on bigfoot a while after that and when a bloke gave an example of the sound they make, I was shocked to hear it. It was the exact same sound. On another day I was walking along the old Brisbane/Gold coast railway line in the area during the day time searching for old railway spikes in the rock base with a metal detector . My brother has an interest in railways and I wanted to get him some. I went in on several different days when I had a chance and on one of these days I couldn't shake the feeling I was being watched. I tried to see into the bush as far as I could but the scrub had pockets of thicker areas. I chose to leave at that point looking over my shoulder on the way back to the road.
I'm not sure if I want a face to face encounter at least not alone. I've heard people say you can encounter mild ones and extremely aggressive ones. I don't know if they would kill a human deliberately, but being beaten half to death with a large chunk of tree worries me a bit.

When development closes off bushland, it will be interesting to see if there will be sightings as they become sealed in. Though they may realise this well before hand and migrate to areas with less human inhabitants. They obviously have a strong survival instinct and have learned to generally avoid humans.