April 6, 2011
BILL O’Chee can remember it like it was yesterday. It was the day the former Queensland National Party senator came face to face with a creature straight out of a nightmare.
A young O’Chee was with a group of 20 fellow TSS students returning from a two-day camp near Springbrook when they saw what they described as a 3m tall hair-covered creature.
To this day, Mr O’Chee is certain what he saw was the mythical yowie.
He told The Gold Coast Bulletin on November 17, 1977 that the animal approached the boys’ camp on several occasions, at one stage coming within 10m of their cabins.
“About 20 of us saw it,” he said then.
“It was about 3m tall, covered in hair, had a flat face and walked to the side in a crab-like style.
“It smashed small saplings and trees like matchsticks as it careered through the bush, we spotted it several times and once watched it through binoculars. It definitely was there.
“We first saw it just before we returned back to Southport on the afternoon of October 23.”
Contacted this week, Mr O’Chee was happy to confirm the story and said his memory of what he saw was as clear to him today as it was 27 years ago.
“I still remember it, I can still see the damn thing,” he said.
“The majority of my school chums still remember it, it was such an amazing experience.
“It was a big thing, about 8ft tall through the binoculars, it moved in a crab-like fashion.
“We saw where it had been lying on the grbutt and the impression it left was about 8ft long.
“That night it just ripped up whole shrubs between the creek and where our camp was, right out of the ground, – roots and all. A bloke can’t do that, it was quite incredible.”
Mr O’Chee said his experience had left him with the certainty that yowies do exist.
“I do believe it. Nothing that has happened since has made me believe otherwise, all I can say is that it did exist when I saw it,” he said.
“Stranger things have happened. In the last couple of years they have discovered animals in the South-East Asian jungle that are new that survived the Vietnam War. And Australia has a history of supporting large fauna.
“I know the school (TSS) never went back there (Springbrook).
“Some of us got into trouble for mentioning it but I’m not sorry because it’s true.
“I hope it’s still out there and if they are we would be wise to just leave them well alone.”
Mr O’Chee’s sighting is the most famous of reported incidents involving yowies, but there have been thousands of cases around the country of alleged contact with the famed mythical beast.the Barossa South Australia
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.
Filed under Bigfoot Report, Cryptotourism, Cryptozoology, Eyewitness Accounts, Videos, Yowie