The Yowie of Australia’s Blue Mountains

Posted by: Craig Woolheater on March 19th, 2006

Loren wrote about the April issue of Fortean Times in a previous entry here on Cryptomundo. One of the authors of an article in the Monster Hunters section of that issue, Mike Williams, weighs in with a guest blog for Cryptomundo.

In the April 2006 issue of Fortean Times I have co-written an article with Ruby Lang about yowies in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, Australia.

Since just prior to moving to the area myself, yowies have been something of a passion of mine – reports of man beasts roaming the Australian wilderness certainly seemed deserved of first-hand attention.

Consequently I have gone out, night after night, ‘in search of’ one of Australia’s more intriguing cryptozoological mysteries – the yowie.

A colourful part of Aboriginal legend, the yowie has something of a fearsome reputation. It is often described as being 7-8ft tall, covered in dark hair with burning red eyes – and a body odour problem that would rival a teenage boy.

The Blue Mountains holds the rather intriguing nickname of The Blue Labyrinth, and for good reason. At more than 1 million hectares, much of it relatively unexplored, the Mountains seem to hold many secrets in its maze-like confines. About 10 years ago it reluctantly yielded up one of them: the “living fossil”, the Wollemi pine, discovered deep in a gorge in Wollemi National Park, now part of the greater Blue Mountains world heritage area.

So it doesn’t seem so unlikely that there might be other yet-to-be-discovered creatures, more fleet of foot, waiting in the shadows.

It is a favourite area of "high strangeness" for Forteans, also yielding a wealth of big cat, UFO and ghostly phenomena.

Reports of yowies in the area date back to 1800s; a report from The Bathurst Times in 1891 recounts the experience of two men from the Oberon area who reported seeing a "hairy man" in the wild Kanangra country of the southern Blue Mountains, a place where the legend was already well established.

After finding "the imprint of a huge foot" they "were startled by the noise of timber breaking, and a low, growling, grating sound". There before them, on the edge of the cliff, "stood an animal of the baboon species" which, when advanced upon, "swung himself over the cliff by a huge vine, and descended in that manner until he disappeared in the gorge beneath".

Yowie Print

Yowie footprint found in the bush compared to a size 12 boot

Two of the contemporary cases we discuss are ongoing: they involve schoolteacher Neil Frost and family, the other involves retired Navy seaman Jerry O’Connor and his wife Sue. Despite the two parties living quite close to each other, they only became acquainted through the sightings occurring around their homes, which started approximately 10 years ago.

Yowie Witnesses

Jerry & Sue O’Connor – Yowie Eyewitnesses

There are many theories as to what the yowie might be: relict hominid, wild nature spirit, a visitor from another dimension, an alien life form, some kind of hitherto undiscovered primate. Whatever it is, it has been regularly sighted all along the eastern seaboard of Australia for more than 100 years.

Authors Tony Healy and Paul Cropper (of Out Of The Shadows fame) have extensively documented the cases of the Frosts’, the O’Conners’ and hundreds of others in their new book The Yowie Files, due to be released later this year.

Mike Williams and Ruby Lang are actively researching yowie reports in the Blue Mountains and further afield. They can be contacted by email at ozestrange@internode.on.net or via their website Strange Nation.

About Craig Woolheater
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005. I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films: OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.


5 Responses to “The Yowie of Australia’s Blue Mountains”

  1. darkworx responds:

    Yowie-zowies!

  2. bill green responds:

    hi sasquatch researchers good afternoon wow this is definetly a very informative & wonderful new article about the yowie it realy helped with my research. please keep me informed ok. thanks bill :)i hope i see more pithy honest post about the yowie in this great blog etc.

  3. Mike Smith responds:

    Hope to hear more about this.

  4. neilyas11 responds:

    Hi, had my own experence with what I think was a yowie in the Northern Beaches of Sydney when I was 19 or 20 years old, very scary.

    I was coming home from a mates house on a sunday night, I remember because I had to work the next day.

    I wasn’t driving as my mate only lived 5kms away, so I used to walk it alot.

    This was from Avalon to Clareville, anybody that knows this area would know it was very bushy and at 1am in the morning with very few to no street lights it had an eerie feel about the area.

    I was walking along Avalon parade, this was well lit, it took me about 35 mins to reach the end of it where Clareville started, I had to get to a road called Hilltop rd, very bushy no lights, scary, I was walking along in Hilltop rd and I heard something to my left, up above, walking alone in the bush pacing me, every step I made it made with me.

    I was starting scare myself now, so I started running it ran with me, smashing through thick branches up the hill above me I knew they where thick because I could here the wood cracking when it broke.

    I could see my house up ahead, with the front flood light on, so I slowed it also slowed down then I ran like a maniac to my house up the driveway onto the verandah then the side flood light went on and the thing stopped running, I think the light stopped it.

    I then went inside and stayed awake for the rest of the night wondering where this thing was.

    I never walked home again after that always drove home.

    Anybody else had something like this happen to them.

  5. Ruby Lang responds:

    Great story – first one I’ve heard coming from the Northern Beaches area. I thought the only hairy men around that way were surfers *grin*.
    You should drop a line to http://www.yowiehunters.com and share your story with them, they have an impressive database of yowie encounters.

Sorry. Comments have been closed.

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