Yowiehunters Forum

Not sure if this has been tried before.

I want to try and keep an easy access archive of Australian network stories covering the topic.

I'll kick it off with this from SBS in 2016...

Why bigfoot sightings are so common across cultures

"What's so appealing about the myth of a giant ape?
By Edward Simon
Source: The Atlantic 26 OCT 2016 - 4:00 PM

Since the 15th century, and possibly earlier, there have been accounts of hairy, nude, and tremendously strong people living in the more obscure corners of the Caucasus. Called ‘Almas,’ the creatures are occasionally shot, sometimes domesticated (and, in one case, wed). Across the sunbaked Eurasian steppe and high in the Himalayas, there is the white-furred Yeti, the abominable snowman of hikers’ accounts. Six thousand miles away, the so-called ‘skunk-ape’ skulks among the swamps in between Florida strip-malls, refreshing himself with chlorinated water from the swimming pools of Miami-Dade County’s McMansions. The Dreamtime country of Australia’s outback has the ‘Yowie’; in Indonesia, there is the jabbering, tiny, orange-colored ‘Ebu Gogo,’ or the ‘Grandma who eats anything.’ And, of course, ambling among the redwoods in the misty forests of the Pacific Northwest is the most iconic crypto-zoological primate of all: the Sasquatch.

"Whether Sasquatch is real or not, people often seem to wish and believe that he was"

I am agnostic on the scientific reality of Bigfoot, though the Florida skunk ape hiding among the cul-de-sacs of suburban Miami seems a tad unlikely. Most primatologists do not consider the existence of an unknown North American Great Ape, or a remnant of the Australopithecus or Neanderthal population, as likely. I have no reason to contradict them. Yet whether Sasquatch is real or not, people often seem to wish and believe that he was. Why has Bigfoot, and his associated permutations—the ‘wild men’—been such a frequent expectation? Why do we keep on seeing the Sasquatch that isn’t there?

Enkidu, from the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, arguably marks the beginning of the ‘wild man’ genealogy. Both “an animal and a man,” he is the prototypical pre-human, a liminal man-beast, not quite wild and not quite tame (that is until he is domesticated by the goddess Shamhat with sex and beer, as so many are). Enkidu fights a losing battle with Gilgamesh, and from that brawl they “became bonded in friendship.” Enkidu represents our primal roots in nature, suggesting that people are fundamentally animals. The battle between Gilgamesh and Enkidu enacts civilization’s struggles as it emerges from the wilderness, but also serves as a reminder of how superficial that difference can be. Their friendship points to humanity’s bestial genesis.

Imagine how potent this message must have been during civilization’s infancy, when the vast majority still lived as hunter-gatherers and the cultural memory of that earlier state was not so distant. This first wild-man allegory was followed by similar stories. There are biblical accounts of the hirsute Esau who is ‘red, all over like a hairy garment’ and is later supplanted by his younger brother Jacob. There are the giant Nephilim, and there is the humiliation of Nebuchadnezzar reduced to a brutish state. Wild men also appear in classical accounts of fawns and satyrs, and the animalistic Pan could be seen as a type of ‘Sasquatch,’ even if he is more caprine than apish. Medieval Europe had its wild men, its woodwoses, its fairies and fays, and its Green Men, all examples of intermediaries between culture and our animalistic beginnings.

"He represents the virginal innocence of our species’ origins"

There is one version of the wild man that, through contrast, helps to explain the Sasquatch: the ‘noble savage.’ The idea of the ‘noble savage,’ particularly in the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is humankind in pristine, uncorrupted, natural perfection. He represents the virginal innocence of our species’ origins. The noble savage is a natural inhabitant of Eden—and so is the Sasquatch. Both hark back to the prelapsarian simplicity of life before civilization corrupted us, an era before government, law, industry, commerce and war. The difference is that, while the ‘noble savage’ has an air of admirable innocence, the Sasquatch is uncanny, a creepily distorted reflection of our most primal nature. The historian of science Brian Regal writes in Searching for Sasquatch (2011) of these ‘apish’ monsters that are “disturbingly like us,” which have “stalked the dark parts of the human psyche, as well as forests, for millennia.”

The wild man takes part in a mode that I (only partially tongue-in-cheek) call the ‘Sasquatch Pastoral.” Pastoralism is identified with Virgil’s Eclogues and Horace’sEpodes, with the Renaissance poetry of Petrarch and Boccaccio, of Spenser and Marlowe—things that might seem rather far from a comedy such as Harry and the Hendersons. The Princeton Handbook of Poetic Terms explains that pastoral literature is defined by “interest in the relation of the human to the natural world,” allowing for “imaginary rustic diversions.” Does not the allure of the Sasquatch relate to that definition of the pastoral? But the Sasquatch Pastoral is more unsettling, indeed disquieting, though it fulfills much of the same catharsis that the more traditional pastoral does. The Sasquatch Pastoral is the wild, bestial inversion of the classical view, a kind of uncanny Arcadia.

Perhaps the best example of the Sasquatch Pastoral is the character Caliban, from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. He combines the feral nature of a beast with an unsettling facility in human language (taught to him by Prospero). Upon encountering the jumbled, bestial form of Caliban, Trinculo says: “Were I in England now … there would this monster make a/man; any strange beast there makes a man.’ Caliban is also darkly connected to European representations of aboriginal inhabitants, presented as a not entirely unsympathetic ignoble savage.

"...where our desires and fears concerning the animal nature of humanity are projected"

In The Country and the City (1975), Raymond Williams described the pastoral as “myth functioning as memory.” The Sasquatch, as an evolutionary middle between humanity’s past and our present, is a type of pseudo-scientific myth understood in the language of memory. The allure of the Sasquatch is that by imagining ourselves “in the body of Sasquatch’—as the historian of science Joshua Blu Buhs writes in Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend (2009)—people ‘could come into contact with their own souls, their own repressed and forbidden desires”; we could envision our own origins. In short, the Sasquatch Pastoral is where our desires and fears concerning the animal nature of humanity are projected onto shadowy creatures, a manifestation of our awareness of the messy biological reality of what it means to be human.

Bigfoot might or might not roam the primeval forests of the Pacific Northwest, watching us and avoiding us, a reminder of our deepest, animalistic past. But whether or not there is an actual creature, the archetypal Sasquatch is, in his own way, very real.

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/thefeed/art ... s-cultures

AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING COMMISSION

21 June, 2012 6:02AM AEST

Yowie sightings and other weird beasts in western New South Wales

When Brooke Daniels spoke to Rob Willis from the National Sound Archive about yowie sightings, it triggered a flurry of discussion and controversy.
"They crop up quite a bit," Rob says of sightings of the folklore creatures. "There's this great debate as to whether the yowie is a latecomer, or an earlycomer, or how long they've been around.
"I first came across this in Indigenous culture, particularly around the Condobolin area. It's quite common in Indigenous culture.
From Indigenous legends to the hazy visions of truck drivers passing through the Pilliga, tales of weird beasts just won't go away.
Catherine Rookyard was the graphic designer and typesetter for Rex Gilroy's book Giants of the Dreamtime, a job which involved reading the whole book and scanning and positioning hundreds of photographs.
"I can honestly say, with a sane mind, that I went from an absolute non-believer to someone who will not discount the possibility of any of what he says," Catherine says.
"He had so much information, way beyond what we were able to get into his book, and the stories and testimonials from regular people were nothing short of extraordinary.
"Let's just say that there are areas of the Blue Mountains and the rest of Australia where there's no way I'll ever spend the night camping. Believe it or not, we can't say its not possible just because we ourselves have not experienced it."
Greg Norris agrees, but thinks some of the accounts are embroidered.
"I couldn't deny the possibility of a yowie like creature existing. There is plenty of remote bushland for one or more to survive undetected, but sure I think some of the stories are utter nonsense."
Nicole Jordan says she's had secondhand experience of the yowie.
"My science teacher had them eat apples from his tree in Hazelbrook. I do believe him, he brought in photos... and a plaster print from his driveway."
But there are disbelievers. Rowley Holmes says he's not buying it.
"Of all the people in the world and all the cameras available to them, is this the best we can do? Come on."
And Max Watson agrees.
"Fake! Although the panther is real."

http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2012/ ... 529867.htm

This is a transcript from PM.
The program is broadcast around Australia at 5:10pm on Radio National and 6:10pm
on ABC Local Radio.
Bigfoot still out there, despite hoax video
PM - Friday, 15 August , 2008 18:48:00
Reporter: Jesse Leary
MARK COLVIN: August in the Northern Hemisphere is known in the news trade as the silly season, often marked by sightings of such creatures as the Loch Ness Monster and the Abominable Snowman.
Today's media sensation has been a reported finding of Bigfoot in the United States.
But there's already been an admission that part of the evidence offered was fake.
Despite scepticism there are still those who say Bigfoot exists.
Jesse Leary reports
JESSE LEARY: The existence of an ape-like creature known as Bigfoot has been the subject amongst people who believe in cryptozoology for decades.
Last month, two men in the United States, Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, said they had discovered the body of a Bigfoot-like creature in the southern state of Georgia.
They posted a photo of their find on the Internet and even had a scientist fly in from interstate to examine the corpse.
Dr Paul Van Buren told the pair in an interview published online, that he had never seen anything like it before.
PAUL VAN BUREN: I don't even know what to say, you know. I've been all over the world studying primates and I don't even know what category this thing falls into. I mean, it's obviously a male, we looked at a very, very large primate male. It doesn't fit into any of the taxonomic groups that I can think of. Unbelievable.
JESSE LEARY: But the pair have since admitted that their scientist was fake, and none other than Matthew Whitton's brother, Martin.
Vice-President of Australian Sceptics Incorporated in New South Wales, Richard Saunders, says the story is a hoax.

RICHARD SAUNDERS: I'm entirely and utterly unconvinced. It seems to me and it's really obvious that it's a publicity stunt for their website. The whole idea is for the media to be talking about their website and they're going to get lots and lots of hits.

It's pretty transparent and it's a bit silly really.
JESSE LEARY: Australian cryptonaturalist Tim "The Yowie Man" says despite the hoax there is some evidence that Bigfoot may exist.

TIM: I'm still keeping an open mind about whether Bigfoot creatures do exist. There's overwhelming anecdotal evidence to suggest that they do, not only in the United States but also in the Himalayas, also in Canada, even in China there's the Yerin which is a Bigfoot-type creature that's seen and of course in Australia, the Yowie.
So, there's a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest that all these Bigfoot-type creatures exist but still it will take some DNA evidence or a real carcass to prove once and for all that these creatures really are out there.
JESSE LEARY: Australian Sceptics Incorporated is also concerned possible hoaxes like this one, impede other genuine investigations into the paranormal.

Vice president of the New South Wales branch Richard Saunders.
RICHARD SAUNDERS: I would hope it doesn't detract too much from it because yes there are some genuine investigations going on out there into the paranormal. We've yet to find anything substantial. None of the claims so far have lived up to their promise but it doesn't hurt to keep looking.
JESSE LEARY: While this investigation takes place, believers says they'll continue to look for the legend of Bigfoot.
MARK COLVIN: Jesse Leary.

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2008/s2337180.htm

Search for yowies, yetis, mysterious beasts leads to discovery of 'Lazarus species'
ABC Far North By Adam Stephen and Mark Rigby
Posted 21 Nov 2016, 11:19am
Some would argue yowies, yetis and sasquatch attract more attention than they deserve, but the search for mythical beasts has led to some very real discoveries.
According to Professor Bill Laurance, James Cook University researcher and holder of an Australian Laureate Fellowship, one of the country's highest scientific awards, legend-hunters have a place in the scientific community.
"These people that go out and look for this stuff sometimes find some amazing things," Professor Laurance said.
"There's been so-called 'Lazarus species' — things that have risen up from the dead or that we thought were long ago extinct — that have been found.
"One of the most famous examples is the coelacanth, the fish we thought had been dead since the time of the dinosaurs.
"There's the Wollemi Pine which was thought to have disappeared a couple of hundred-million years ago [and] was discovered just a stone's throw from Sydney."
Professor Laurance said there were too many species that had been re-discovered to warrant belittling people who went in search of the mysterious.
"There's so much we still don't know, there's so many things we're discovering all the time and I think it's a little arrogant to suggest that we know everything, because we don't," he said.
That being said, Professor Laurance does not believe in yowies, bigfoot, or any other regional derivative of the species.
"I hate to pour water on the party but there's a vanishingly small chance that something of that size could go unnoticed for this long," he said.
"Even in the deep Amazon, it'd be difficult to imagine something like that going completely undetected."
Tree-dwelling tricksters
While conducting fieldwork for his PhD Professor Laurance gained firsthand knowledge of just how pervasive monster legends could be.
In the Maalan area, about 80 kilometres south of Cairns in far north Queensland, locals tell the story of a logger who was so terrified by the sight of a giant monster in the forest he refused to ever return.
Professor Laurance said he too had had experiences with things that went bump in the night.
Rare Lumholtz tree kangaroo Mupee
"I never saw any yowies, but I did encounter a number of tree kangaroos," he said.
"When they're frightened tree kangaroos have this habit of crashing down out of the tree and then they go bounding loudly away.
"If you didn't know what you you were seeing or hearing, I can imagine that being pretty frightening."
Science versus silliness
While he has a lot of time for so-called 'fringe scientists', Professor Laurance said they walked a fine line between being accepted and ostracised.
"There have been some people that have really invested a lot of time in what other scientists consider 'fringe activities', and there's a couple of well-known examples," he said.
"A professor at Washington State University spent something like $50,000 of his own money to buy a small aeroplane [and] thermal imaging equipment trying to find a bigfoot or a sasquatch — he was looked down on by his colleagues.
"Another well-known academic at the University of Chicago was actually fired because he was spending a lot of time looking for this sort of aquatic dinosaur that supposedly lived in the Congo basin."
According to Professor Laurance, it is human nature to believe in the existence of mysterious animals and if that natural curiosity led to more mainstream discoveries, he would be one happy scientist.
"The bottom line is there's some cool stuff yet to be discovered," he said.
"If somebody tells me they've been kidnapped by flying saucers, that's getting a little too far out on the fringes for my comfort zone.
"But for people who want to find these mystery animals, I think more power to them."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-21/s ... es/8004930

Tuesday 12 February 2008 5:55PM

ABC PROGRAM "PERSPECTIVE"

Wildmen and other imaginary figures
Robert Hollingworth
Supporting Information

Every generation has its lurking character to fear, some menacing figure on the periphery of the known world, more imagined than actually seen. There are dozens of them: vampires, ghouls, sasquatch figures like Bigfoot, the Abominable Snowman or the Yeti - and of course Australia's very own Yowie who seems to have roamed mountainous regions since the 1850's.

One of the very first of these troublesome souls was the Wuduwasa of Medieval Europe. Translated, Wuduwasa means "hairy man of the woods" and there are mentions of him as early as the 13th century in Norway. There are depictions of the Wuduwasa wildmen on the ceiling bosses of the Cathedral of Canterbury. In the 15th Century the famous German artist Albrecht Durer put them in his paintings and engravings.

And so it was that the idea of "the wildman of the woods" passed through generations into the 19th Century, a malevolent character haunting impressionable minds in the darkest hours.

It's not surprising then, that in 1877, when a mysterious figure was seen in the dense mountain forests of Central Victoria, the local fledgling community suddenly went all jittery. Over the next three years this figure was seen several times and five Victorian newspapers began to run stories: who was the cryptic, bearded, long-haired character who ran wild in the Tallarook Ranges?

Of course we should also acknowledge that at this time Ned Kelly was on the run and he was well-known in the region. One of his first tasks as a young lad was to hold the horses for the bushranger Harry Power who calmly walked into the Seymour Bank just 20 km from where the Wildman lived, frightened the life out of Dennis Haves the young teller and then strolled out with all their gold and cash.

In 1880, the whereabouts of "The Wildman of Tallarook" was finally discovered. He'd been living secretly in a very tidy underground dwelling, completely hidden from view, for more than a dozen years. Of course the troopers immediately captured him and they soon learned he was Henricke Nelsen, a Swede, who had arrived in Melbourne in 1861. They decided to put him on trial in Kilmore. "On what charge?" one may well ask. The answer: Vagrancy, for which Nelsen was eventually convicted and sentenced to six months gaol, hard labour.

Now I've had a house in those same Tallarook Ranges for a number of years, just minutes from whereNelsen lived. It's wild country indeed. Massive granite boulders stick out of sheer slopes that drop into deep gorges. And so I have come to know this country very well and eventually decided to write a book about Nelsen; it seemed to me that the socalled "Wildman" should have his story told. And I decided to let Nelsen tell it in his own words, in the form of a prison diary. In so doing, I drew upon all of the historical documents of the period remaining faithful to actual characters, real events, dates and places.

Could Nelsen have kept a prison diary? In 1858 Owen Suffolk did exactly that from his own prison cell. He was a notorious crook and sometimes-bushranger of the Geelong region - which is where Nelsen served his time. Owen Suffolk's autobiography was published serially in the Australasian newspaper only a dozen years before Nelsen's arrest.

My book about Henricke Nelsen tells the story of an ordinary man who, for the period, had an extraordinary idea: to shun the Colonial spirit. He turned his back on the noble ambition to clear and colonise and instead went to live a Thoreau-style life on a somewhat inhospitable mountain.

But the question remains: why would people want Nelsen off the scene? We wouldn't do it in this day and age - would we? Even today some people harbour fears of an unknown element living on the periphery of their daily lives; people of another nationality, of a different skin colour, a different religion or way of life; people who we may poorly understand. And even if they're not incarcerated, sometimes mentally they are locked up.

Perhaps it's a natural human response to fear the unknown, albeit usually an irrational one. But a consequence of this is that sometimes ordinary people like you and me - yet doing things a little differently - are shunned or even worse, alienated from our safe little worlds of the familiar and well-trodden.

Henricke Nelsen in the 1880's was a victim of this prejudice. But this is the 21st Century and we've learned from our mistakes, haven't we?
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/pro ... th/3280356

24 April, 2014 10:21AM AEST

Close encounter of the 'Yowie' kind

By Janel Shorthouse and Annie Gaffney

While fads in phenomena have swung through crop circles, aliens and conspiracy theories; one phenomena that refuses to go away and regularly surfaces with each new 'sighting or encounter' is that of the mythical Australian creature known as a Yowie.

Annette Jeffs recently retold a friend's encounter with what is believed to be a Yowie on ABC Local Radio.
Whichever way you see it, Annette's story is either fascinating or unreal, but for cryptozoological researcher Gary Opit it's another piece to the puzzle in tracking down Australia's version of Bigfoot.
Cryptozoology is a pseudoscience involving the search for animals whose existence is disputed. We're talking yowies, bigfoot and really big cats.

The sighting - Imbil State Forest, Kenilworth, Sunshine Coast

Annette tells the captivating story...
"It was a very good friend of mine and I do believe everything she tells me, and she was also with another friend who I know quite well and who is a school teacher and neither wants to be named for fear of being ridiculed," she said.
"My friend is a photographer and they were out doing night time shooting.
"It was along the Fig Tree walk, just opposite the Charlie Moreland campground.
"They were walking through the bush at night time by torch light and they were heading down towards the creek and they got a really strange strong smell and they both commented and said, 'yuk, isn't' that a horrible smell. What a disgusting smell'.
"They went a little bit further and heard a crunching noise through the bush ahead of them, and then they saw it, with two big red eyes staring back at them.
"Not too close, just a little bit away from them.
"Whatever it was, they said it was quite tall, and it kept going and then every now and then it would turn around and look back at them.
"They shone their torches on it and they couldn't really make out what it was, but all they could clearly see were these red eyes.
"Anyway they were freaked out and started heading back towards the car and kept turning the torches off because they were afraid they might get attacked or something.
"As they approached the car they heard the dog they'd left locked in the car freaking out and going mental, just barking and barking.
"They thought whatever the thing was; it was now at the car trying to attack the dog. Anyway they got back to the car, the dog was alright thankfully, so they quickly got into the car and drove home.
"As soon as they got home, my friend went straight to the computer and starting researching.
"They didn't have a clue, no idea what they'd seen, but the thing that kept coming up from their searches was yowie.
"They were shocked. They wanted to report it to someone reputable, but are fearful of being ridiculed at work," recounts Annette.
The verdict - Encounter of the 'Yowie' kind?
Listening intently, cryptozoological researcher Gary Opit nods his head.
"That's absolutely typical of a yowie sighting; the smell, the height, the nocturnal activity," he said.
"There's no two ways about it, that fits perfectly into a contact with a yowie, and what they seem to be is very large primates, very closely related to humans."
Gary has had a weekly wildlife programme on ABC Local Radio for 17 years; and he has been a member of the Royal Zoological Society of NSW for almost 40 years.
An Environmental Scientist, Gary has assisted Australian Government's in all areas of conservation and is highly regarded in the Australian Crypto world as 'the' authority.
His speciality includes weird and unusual animals - thylacines, yowies, little people, Australian bush tigers, pumas, mermaids and more.
Gary continues...
"Now because of our cultural upbringing, most people believe that there's never been any other kind of human living on the planet, but in fact of course there has always (for millions of years) been other species.
"Homo erectus and Homo palaeojavanicus have been found in Indonesia as million year old fossils, though Homo floresiensis fossils from Flores, on the Australian side of the Wallace Line, are only 13,000 years old. Homo neanderthalensis is known from fossil evidence to have existed throughout Eurasia until about 28,000 years ago. The Australian, New Guinean and Solomon Island bigfoot and the much smaller njimbin/junjadee are most likely related to these species and may have reached these shores as survivors washed out to sea by Tsunamis.
"Hair samples, excellent footprints with detailed dermal ridges, photographs and video footage have been obtained. However, no bodies or skeletal remains, essential for identification, have been found.
"The interesting thing is, if the animal didn't exist, there should be no evidence for its existence."
Healthy scepticism
Gary concedes being sceptical about the existence of yowies is natural.
"Of course, we are all extreme sceptics and we have to be unless we'd be easily fooled by conmen and charlatans and what have you," he said.
Referring back to Annette's story, Gary draws on the evidence provided and the disturbance of the pet dog left in the carpark.
"Also it's known that yowie's don't like dogs, and as we all well know, dogs have an incredible sense of smell and hearings and so dogs, like horses and other animals can detect animals that we can't and from further away also.
"You see, these yowies, the reason they're unknown and we don't know what they are except that they seem to be very heavily furred, human like animals, and are intelligent, is because they are completely unaggressive. That's why they are unknown. Obviously if they were killing people we'd know about it.
"I've only heard of one encounter, where a pack of dogs attacked a yowie in the Rockhampton region and were biting it, and the yowie grabbed one of the dogs by the head and crushed its head and used the body of the dog to defend itself and drove them off. Then threw the carcass into a tree and walked off."

http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/201 ... 989876.htm

Hi Paul, interesting read the things your posting and a good idea for an archive.
I know you have trawled through lots of Trove stuff looking for newspaper clippings
and now more modern examples in the media.

The thing that interests me is any mention of the hairy man in colonial poetry.
There’s not much colonial poetry anyway; struggles in the new gumleaf arcadia
and maybe casting off the mother country is a common theme.
You previously put me onto Henry Kendall’s poem ‘The Wail in the native Oak’ and the ‘Warrigal’.

To save repeating myself, my response to your original post was Henry Kendall and the Wildman.
Sun Oct 9, 2016 (controversial section) For the life of me I can’t track down your original post
that I responded to. I would like to read what you wrote about Kendall again;
sure pays to write down every detail when your quoting something.

To my delight I recently came across a poem that is about the hairy man. I don’t know if this poem
has been mentioned before but I was happy to find it. I found it at the Australian Poetry library.
It is by Tom Freeman (psued.) ‘The Hairy man of Koorawatha’

In the poets by alphabetical order section under F you will see, Freeman, Tom (psued).
There is no information about this poem. It sounds like it was from the mid 19th century.

Where the hell is Koorawatha ?

cheers

T.


https://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/ ... ha-0036051

Tuckeroo wrote:Hi Paul, interesting read the things your posting and a good idea for an archive.
I know you have trawled through lots of Trove stuff looking for newspaper clippings
and now more modern examples in the media.

The thing that interests me is any mention of the hairy man in colonial poetry.
There’s not much colonial poetry anyway; struggles in the new gumleaf arcadia
and maybe casting off the mother country is a common theme.
You previously put me onto Henry Kendall’s poem ‘The Wail in the native Oak’ and the ‘Warrigal’.

To save repeating myself, my response to your original post was Henry Kendall and the Wildman.
Sun Oct 9, 2016 (controversial section) For the life of me I can’t track down your original post
that I responded to. I would like to read what you wrote about Kendall again;
sure pays to write down every detail when your quoting something.

To my delight I recently came across a poem that is about the hairy man. I don’t know if this poem
has been mentioned before but I was happy to find it. I found it at the Australian Poetry library.
It is by Tom Freeman (psued.) ‘The Hairy man of Koorawatha’

In the poets by alphabetical order section under F you will see, Freeman, Tom (psued).
There is no information about this poem. It sounds like it was from the mid 19th century.

Where the hell is Koorawatha ?

cheers

T.


https://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/ ... ha-0036051

Here you go matey I think this is the tread you want?

viewtopic.php?f=45&t=3966&p=41952&hilit ... all#p41952

paulmcleod67 wrote:24 April, 2014 10:21AM AEST

Close encounter of the 'Yowie' kind

By Janel Shorthouse and Annie Gaffney

While fads in phenomena have swung through crop circles, aliens and conspiracy theories; one phenomena that refuses to go away and regularly surfaces with each new 'sighting or encounter' is that of the mythical Australian creature known as a Yowie.

Annette Jeffs recently retold a friend's encounter with what is believed to be a Yowie on ABC Local Radio.
Whichever way you see it, Annette's story is either fascinating or unreal, but for cryptozoological researcher Gary Opit it's another piece to the puzzle in tracking down Australia's version of Bigfoot.
Cryptozoology is a pseudoscience involving the search for animals whose existence is disputed. We're talking yowies, bigfoot and really big cats.

The sighting - Imbil State Forest, Kenilworth, Sunshine Coast

Annette tells the captivating story...
"It was a very good friend of mine and I do believe everything she tells me, and she was also with another friend who I know quite well and who is a school teacher and neither wants to be named for fear of being ridiculed," she said.
"My friend is a photographer and they were out doing night time shooting.
"It was along the Fig Tree walk, just opposite the Charlie Moreland campground.
"They were walking through the bush at night time by torch light and they were heading down towards the creek and they got a really strange strong smell and they both commented and said, 'yuk, isn't' that a horrible smell. What a disgusting smell'.
"They went a little bit further and heard a crunching noise through the bush ahead of them, and then they saw it, with two big red eyes staring back at them.
"Not too close, just a little bit away from them.
"Whatever it was, they said it was quite tall, and it kept going and then every now and then it would turn around and look back at them.
"They shone their torches on it and they couldn't really make out what it was, but all they could clearly see were these red eyes.
"Anyway they were freaked out and started heading back towards the car and kept turning the torches off because they were afraid they might get attacked or something.
"As they approached the car they heard the dog they'd left locked in the car freaking out and going mental, just barking and barking.
"They thought whatever the thing was; it was now at the car trying to attack the dog. Anyway they got back to the car, the dog was alright thankfully, so they quickly got into the car and drove home.
"As soon as they got home, my friend went straight to the computer and starting researching.
"They didn't have a clue, no idea what they'd seen, but the thing that kept coming up from their searches was yowie.
"They were shocked. They wanted to report it to someone reputable, but are fearful of being ridiculed at work," recounts Annette.
The verdict - Encounter of the 'Yowie' kind?
Listening intently, cryptozoological researcher Gary Opit nods his head.
"That's absolutely typical of a yowie sighting; the smell, the height, the nocturnal activity," he said.
"There's no two ways about it, that fits perfectly into a contact with a yowie, and what they seem to be is very large primates, very closely related to humans."
Gary has had a weekly wildlife programme on ABC Local Radio for 17 years; and he has been a member of the Royal Zoological Society of NSW for almost 40 years.
An Environmental Scientist, Gary has assisted Australian Government's in all areas of conservation and is highly regarded in the Australian Crypto world as 'the' authority.
His speciality includes weird and unusual animals - thylacines, yowies, little people, Australian bush tigers, pumas, mermaids and more.
Gary continues...
"Now because of our cultural upbringing, most people believe that there's never been any other kind of human living on the planet, but in fact of course there has always (for millions of years) been other species.
"Homo erectus and Homo palaeojavanicus have been found in Indonesia as million year old fossils, though Homo floresiensis fossils from Flores, on the Australian side of the Wallace Line, are only 13,000 years old. Homo neanderthalensis is known from fossil evidence to have existed throughout Eurasia until about 28,000 years ago. The Australian, New Guinean and Solomon Island bigfoot and the much smaller njimbin/junjadee are most likely related to these species and may have reached these shores as survivors washed out to sea by Tsunamis.
"Hair samples, excellent footprints with detailed dermal ridges, photographs and video footage have been obtained. However, no bodies or skeletal remains, essential for identification, have been found.
"The interesting thing is, if the animal didn't exist, there should be no evidence for its existence."
Healthy scepticism
Gary concedes being sceptical about the existence of yowies is natural.
"Of course, we are all extreme sceptics and we have to be unless we'd be easily fooled by conmen and charlatans and what have you," he said.
Referring back to Annette's story, Gary draws on the evidence provided and the disturbance of the pet dog left in the carpark.
"Also it's known that yowie's don't like dogs, and as we all well know, dogs have an incredible sense of smell and hearings and so dogs, like horses and other animals can detect animals that we can't and from further away also.
"You see, these yowies, the reason they're unknown and we don't know what they are except that they seem to be very heavily furred, human like animals, and are intelligent, is because they are completely unaggressive. That's why they are unknown. Obviously if they were killing people we'd know about it.
"I've only heard of one encounter, where a pack of dogs attacked a yowie in the Rockhampton region and were biting it, and the yowie grabbed one of the dogs by the head and crushed its head and used the body of the dog to defend itself and drove them off. Then threw the carcass into a tree and walked off."

http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/201 ... 989876.htm

Thats a really interesting article. Simple and straight to the point. Not really telling anything new but was interesting reading about the witness report and Garry's opinion.

He states that Yowies are 'unaggressive'? I think that could be debated as there seems to be a link with some aggressive like characteristics from reports.