New Yowie Sighting Reported
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on June 1st, 2007
A MYSTERIOUS creature allegedly sighted scampering into the bush outside Batemans Bay has all the hallmarks of the legendary Yowie, according to cryptozoology experts.
Around 11pm last Saturday a Batemans Bay resident, who wishes to remain anonymous, saw what she described as a two-legged non-human creature in her headlights.
She said it was more than six feet tall, covered in a dark brownish fur and appeared and moved like no other animal she had ever seen.
After hearing the report, cryptozoologist Paul Cropper said it was consistent with many he had heard from around the country.
Mr Cropper said Batemans Bay was one of the country’s hot spots for sightings of the mysterious ape-like creature.
He said while the subject was “certainly a little bit out there”, it remains a mystery that has intrigued many people around the Eurobodalla.
“The thing is there is a strong tradition of these cases dating back to the 1800s around that area,” he said. “Many of the reports have come from quite reputable people.”
Mr Cropper has spoken to around 130 eyewitnesses himself.
“The question is, what are they?” he said. “When you think about it, there’s no other
animal they can be mistaken for. In America people may just be spotting bears, but not in Australia.”
Famous Australian cryptozoologist Tim The Yowie Man agreed that the latest description fits the profile of a Yowie.
He said Batemans Bay was one of Australia’s top five spots for reported Yowie activity.
A book authored by Mr Cropper and Tony Healy, The Yowie: In Search of Australia’s Bigfoot, references Batemans Bay several times.
This includes a letter to the Australian Town and Country Journal in 1882 by a H J McCooey.
He claimed he met an Australian ape in the bush between Batemans Bay and Ulladulla and said he knew at least half a dozen local men who had seen the same.
Mr McCooey described it as “a most uncouth and repulsive-looking creature, evidently possessed of prodigious strength”.
The authors claimed this fits in well with local Aboriginal lore, as it described the Cockwhy Mountain area where an Aboriginal elder said Yowies had lived until at least the 1950s.
The book describes an encounter with a pair of the creatures in 1972 when a Bowral truck driver stopped near Cullendulla.
And in 1977 the Moruya Examiner reported the discovery of giant footprints and strange activities on Budd Island, however the authors tended to think this case was a hoax. But they list several other cases, some on the western fringe of Batemans Bay as well as in the Mogo State Forest among other places.David Wheeldon
Bay Post
This artist’s impression was created by Michael Skelton and his daughter after an alleged encounter in Victoria last year.
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.
I’d really like to know more about this topic.
I’m just finding it shaky.
We know plausible ways for the sasquatch to have gotten to North America. Primate evidence (sketchy, but there….hmmmmmmmm) in the fossil record. The Bering Land Bridge, open for a (geologically) limited time.
The only primates in Oz got there by sea.
I’m sure someone could tell me, read the reports, they’re just like the ones for the sasquatch. And I’d say, yep, I’ve read some that are indeed. You gotta wonder what people like SAS troopers are seeing out there that is scaring them that badly.
But are there any theories on how the Yowie got there, or what it is?
(I know: read the book….) 😉
I just bought the book, I hear the Yowie has an Aussie accent.
What about convergent evolution? For those not familiar with the term, convergent evolution is (and I’m no biologist so if I get this wrong please correct me) a phenomenon in which completely unrelated species develop similar adaptations to fill similar ecological niches in similar environments. Australia has plenty of examples of this phenomenon, not the least of which is the famous Thylacine, which evolved into a dog like creature despite being completely unrelated to canines. That being the case, I don’t think it’s much of a jump to assume that the Yowie may have developed along similar lines. That’s just an untested hypothesis though and I’ll be the first to admit I don’t have anything to back it up. But it certainly would explain how an ape like creature came to live in Australia.
Hi guys. Im the co-author of the yowie book. There is clear evidence that Homo Erectus made it as far as the island of Flores, and at that time the distance between Flores and Australia would have been about 60 kilometres. In the 2004 tsunami, one man was washed 160km out to sea, so its not impossible to suspect that Erectus – or perhaps some other early species of man not yet identified – made it to Australia after such an event. Cheers Paul.
Yowie? I looked at that image, and the first thing coming to my mind was “Wookiee-invasion!” . 😀
No, I’ve got to be serious… I think a bigfoot-like creature roaming Australia could be possible.
very informative new yowie sighting. thanks bill
Paul – read your book earlier this year and it was terrific. I (like DWA) knew very little about the yowie, with the exception of some mention in Loren’s books and I was surprised and intrigued by the research you and others have done (especially the reports going back to the 1800’s and also Aboriginal stories).
Reminded me of how Loren’s Field Guide to Bigfoot, Yeti and Mystery Primates made my head spin the first time I read it! Incredibly interesting. I wish there were a complete book for every entry in the field guide.
Although I’m familiar with the Yowie, I’m thinking it’s high time I buy this book…
The Yowie intrigues me, not the least due to its seeming implausibility. My guess would be a migration from Asia, as I just think a Marsupial Ape is a bit of a longshot. The lack of fossil evidence for Sasquatch (Or an introduced primate from Asia in Australia) is not too inexplicable, given that it’s just one species, and likely hasn’t been there for more than, say, 70,000 years, a mere blip in geologic time. A Marsupial Ape, on the other hand, would have to have evolved from an entire line of primate-like Marsupials, so what we’d be looking at here is the absence of fossils for an entire family of animals stretching back for millions of years.
Then again, who expected Homo floresiensis? Well, aside from us cryptoenthusiasts, that is…
Mnynames- That is precisely the problem I have with the existence of the Yowie. I am fairly skeptical of this particular cryptid, but I read this book and I can definitely recommend it. It has some very intriguing stuff in it and whether you find the whole idea far fetched or not, it’s a good read!
Well, mystery_man, that reads like a recommendation to me.
Although the artist’s conception above looks too much like Ian Hunter (former frontman for Mott the Hoople) for my tastes.
Cropper (or Paul if you prefer) 😀 :
Conceivable? Yes. Mega-chip-bettable? I don’t think so. I know other species have apparently done the storm-rafting thing – and I guess it pretty much has to be The Major Theorem for a lot of what we’ve found on small islands, that is that we haven’t introduced. But this one seems kinda big. Although given the prowess reported for the sasquatch, maybe “drownproofing” its way over isn’t out of the question. But a breeding pop doing it? OK, conceivable. But wouldn’t the hobbit (or erectus) have done it…? From the admittedly little I’ve read, the Yowie doesn’t seem either of those.
Actually, the convergent-evolution “primate” solution proposed by D2K4 is one I’ve already hinted at on this site. Maybe it just ain’t a primate, any more than the thylacine is a dog or the cuscus a sloth or a monkey. And as funny as I’ve hinted the above artist’s view is, I’ve seen a number of other illustrations that look like that – and nothing like any hairy hominoid.
If you think about it for a minute, the only thing making that sound woo-woo is our continuing refusal to believe there could be anything close to like us anywhere in the universe.
Except, um, the chimpanzee. And the orangutan. And the gorilla.
Who, well, they still don’t, um, use tools. Um, OK, their DNA isn’t close to ours. Um, OK, but not EXACTLY….
One thing we have to watch out for regarding cryptids – although yes we have to count it as a bar for evidence to get over – is extrapolating from past evidence to current presence.
Whatever the Yowie is, it’s like the sasquatch, apparently, in this one way: people are seeing it. That is, they’re making pretty consistent sightings of what appears to be an animal, fossil evidence or unlikelihood notwithstanding.
Paul: just noticed this.
You say “When you think about it, there’s no other animal they can be mistaken for. In America people may just be spotting bears, but not in Australia.”
They could be seeing drop bears, couldn’t they? 😀
They aren’t seeing bears here, either. Although I may have some reading up to do on the Yowie, I’ve done enough on the sasquatch to say “no way” to that one. People are pretty clearly describing an ape. Or an animal that looks like a cross between a human and a gorilla, to be a bit more open-minded (as we don’t know for sure what it is yet).
But a bear? Nope. (OK, being open-minded here, not a species of bear known to exist. 😉 ) Either they are seeing what they say they are; they are flat lying…or there are drugs, or maybe airborne psychotropic bacteria, or something else widespread in this country that it might really behoove the Centers for Disease Control, never mind the ATF, to find out about.
DWA says- “Whatever the Yowie is, it’s like the sasquatch, apparently, in this one way: people are seeing it. That is, they’re making pretty consistent sightings of what appears to be an animal, fossil evidence or unlikelihood notwithstanding.”
I agree, and this is my main point for people who so easily write off the Jersey Devil (I’m from NJ, so it’s naturally close to my heart), just because it has so much folklore attached to it. The fact remains that hundreds of people, often in sizable groups, have seen something, and that their descriptions do bear consistent general features. You could write off the 1909 panic entirely as “mass hysteria” and still have a solid base of reports.
Not to change the focus of this thread, but my theory is that if you disregard the paranormal elements, you’re left with consistent features which match those claimed for the Thunderbird, which have been frequently sighted across the Delaware in PA. In MD, perhaps it accounts for reports of the Snallygaster. In the midwest it’s the Piasa, in Texas it’s Big Bird or a Pterodactyl. Maybe in West Virginia it’s Mothman. Same animal, just viewed through very different cultural lenses.
As for the Yowie, somebody’s seeing something, consistently, and who’s to say what it is, unless we look? Whatever it is, I think it may be quite different from Sasquatch or Yeti. Perhaps it might be distantly related to the Orang Pendek, or maybe it’s an H. erectus descendant. And yes, it could be a marsupial. I’d love for that to turn out to be the case, for it would show that high intelligence is not the sole province of primates, but something that even very different animals might attain.
Whatever the Yowie is, it is certainly undeniable that people are seeing something out there. But Mnynames said it before that for there to be a Yowie, there would have to be a whole line of evolution leading up to it for which we have no evidence of. Since the continent of Australia broke off long before the evolution of primates, that would mean that some sort of primate would have to have evolved from scratch, perhaps by the convergent evolution that has been mentioned unless somehow apes swam over great distances to get there which I find somewhat hard to swallow. Although I don’t think the lack of fossils is enough to completely write off the idea, it certainly is odd that no sort of evolutionary piece of this primate evolution has been found as far as I am aware. I find this odd if there is such a long history of primate evolution on the continent and would expect to see SOMETHING.
In theory though, a new type of primate-like creature is somewhat feasible in a way, although it may not be a primate per say. During the time that Australia has been separated from the “super-continent”, the marsupials evolved without any contact with placental animals until man introduced them. In this time, they radiated out into a large variety of forms in order to take advantage of the various ecological niches presented to them. There have been some pretty amazing creatures known through fossil records, such as the Thylacoleo (marsupial lion), so a large human sized or larger marsupial is not too far fetched. I am no specialist on the fauna of Australia, but a colleague of mine informed me that one of the only niches left apparently unfilled in Australia is that filled by bears in other parts of the world. Sorry, DWA, not the drop bear variety. 🙂
Now I am not trying to say that all of these eyewitnesses are seeing bears and tend to agree with the above posts in that regard. What it could mean, however, is that some large, herbivorous, bipedal or quasi bipedal, omnivorous, marsupial bear-“like” creature evolved to fit the niche of a bear is out there. From a zoological perspective, this isn’t entirely unfeasible and maybe this animal looks enough like a primate to be mistaken for one without actually being one. Just a thought.
OK, I know the authors might be able to tell me this much:
How much theorizing about what the Yowie is is in the book? Is the possibility that it isn’t a primate seriously entertained?
Just curious. (I’m THIS close to buying it.)
Come on, DWA, just buy the book, you know you want to. 🙂 I really do highly recommend it and it would take to long to go into about what is written in the book here.
ok ok grumble grumble…hairy hominoids holding the purse strings grumble grumble…skip the ‘evidence’ show me the Yowie grumble grumble…amazon.com here I come grumble…
Hey with that cover and that many pages, how bad could it be…? Maybe we could have Meldrum do a review for Cryptomundo, sorta his chance to get back at the Four Horsemen of Scofftockery and the diddle they did on his book. Just an idea.
DWA- Four Horsemen of the Skofftockery! hahaha!
Australia certainly has great expanses of ideal habitat for such a creature as Bigfoot and it is very sparcely populated (mostly around the coast and in the south east). I think something could be there and probably other undiscovered or long considered extinct species as well. 🙂