Yowie

Yowie

Statue of a Yowie in Kilcoy, Queensland, Australia
Country	Australia
Region	Great Dividing Range Northern Territory Australian Capital Territory South Australia West Australia New South Wales Queensland

Yowie is one of several names given to a hominid reputed to live in the Australian wilderness. The creature has its roots in Aboriginal oral history. In parts of Queensland, they are known as quinkin (or as a type of quinkin), and as joogabinna,^[1] in parts of New South Wales they are called jurrawarra, myngawin, puttikan, gubba, doolaga, gulaga and thoolagal.^[1] Other names include yahoo, yaroma, noocoonah, wawee, pangkarlangu, jimbra and tjangara.^[1][2][3]

As is the case with the North American Sasquatch, many people discount the existence of the yowie considering it more likely to be a combination of misidentification, folklore and hoax. Yowie-type creatures are common in Aboriginal Australian legends, particularly in the eastern Australian states.^[4]

Description

The yowie is usually said to be a hairy and ape-like creature standing upright at between 2.1 m (6 ft 11 in) and 3.6 m (12 ft).^[5][6][7] The yowie's feet are said to be much larger than a human's,^[6] but alleged yowie tracks are inconsistent in shape and toe number,^[8] and the descriptions of yowie foot and footprints provided by yowie witnesses are even more varied than those of bigfoot.^[9] The yowie's nose is said to be wide and flat.^[10][11]

Behaviourally, some report the yowie can seem timid or shy.^[6] Others suspect that the yowie is sometimes violent or aggressive.^[12]

Origins of the term

The origin of the name "yowie" to describe unidentified Australian hominids is unclear. Some nineteenth century writers suggested that it arose through Aboriginal legends. Robert Holden recounts several stories that support this from the nineteenth century, including this European account from 1842:

“

The natives of Australia ... believe in ... [the] Yahoo ... This being they describe as resembling a man ... of nearly the same height, ... with long white hair hanging down from the head over the features ... the arms as extraordinarily long, furnished at the extremities with great talons, and the feet turned backwards, so that, on flying from man, the imprint of the foot appears as if the being had travelled in the opposite direction. Altogether, they describe it as a hideous monster of an unearthy character and ape-like appearance.[13]

”

Another story about the name, collected from an Aboriginal source, suggests that the creature is a part of the Dreamtime.

“

Old Bungaree a Gunedah aboriginal ... said at one time there were tribes of them [yahoos] and they were the original inhabitants of the country - he said they were the old race of blacks ... [The yahoos] and the blacks used to fight and the blacks always beat them but the yahoo always made away ... being ... faster runners.[14]

”

On the other hand, Jonathan Swift's yahoos from Gulliver's Travels, and European traditions of hairy wild men, are also cited as a possible source.^[15]

History of sightings

In a column in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1987, columnist Margaret Jones wrote that the first Australian yowie sighting was said to have taken place as early as 1795.^[16]

19th century eyewitness accounts

In the 1870s, accounts of 'Indigenous Apes' appeared in the Australian Town and Country Journal. The earliest account in November 1876 asked readers; "Who has not heard, from the earliest settlement of the colony, the blacks speaking of some unearthly animal or inhuman creature ... namely the Yahoo-Devil Devil, or hairy man of the wood ..."^[17]

In an article entitled "Australian Apes" appearing six years later, amateur naturalist Henry James McCooey claimed to have seen an "indigenous ape" on the south coast of New South Wales, between Batemans Bay and Ulladulla:^[18]

“

"A few days ago I saw one of these strange creatures ... on the coast between Bateman's Bay and Ulladulla ... I should think that if it were standing perfectly upright it would be nearly 5 feet high. It was tailless and covered with very long black hair, which was of a dirty red or snuff-colour about the throat and breast. Its eyes, which were small and restless, were partly hidden by matted hair that covered its head ... I threw a stone at the animal, whereupon it immediately rushed off ..."[19]

”

McCooey offered to capture an ape for the Australian Museum for £40. According to Robert Holden, a second outbreak of reported ape sightings appeared in 1912.^[20] The yowie appeared in Donald Friend's Hillendiana,^[21] a collection of writings about the goldfields near Hill End in New South Wales. Friend refers to the yowie as a species of bunyip. Holden also cites the appearance of the yowie in a number of Australian tall stories in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.^[22]

Present-day accounts of yowie sightings

Yowie reports have continued to the present day with the trail of evidence following the pattern familiar to most unidentified hominids around the world: eyewitness accounts; mysterious footprints of hotly disputed origin; and no conclusive proof. Some recently reported yowie incidents claim that the death and mutilation of household pets, such as dogs, are the result of yowie attacks. Other people claim that the animals' deaths can be attributed to attacks by wild animals such as dingoes.^[23]

Australian Capital Territory

In 2010, a Canberra man spotted a creature that may have been a yowie in his garage. The man reported the creature as being covered in hair, juvenile with long arms. He said it was definitely trying to communicate with him.^[24]

New South Wales

There have been hundreds of accounts of yowie-sightings in New South Wales, including:

• In 1977, residents on Oxley Island near Taree became convinced that blood curdling screams heard at night were connected to a local sighting of a huge black furry creature.^[25]
• In 1994, Tim the Yowie Man claimed to have seen a yowie in the Brindabella Ranges.^[11][26][27]
• In 1996, while on a driving holiday, a couple from Newcastle claim to have seen a yowie between Braidwood and the coast. They said it was a shaggy creature, walking upright, standing at a height of at least 2.1 metres tall, with disproportionally long arms and no neck.^[28]
• In August 2000, a Canberra bushwalker described seeing an unknown bipedal beast in the Brindabella Mountains. The bushwalker, Steve Piper, caught the incident on videotape. That film is known as the 'Piper Film'.^[11]
• In March 2011, a witness reported to NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service seeing a yowie in the Blue Mountains at Springwood, west of Sydney. The witness had filmed the creature, and taken photographs of its footprints.^[26]
• In May 2012, a United States television crew claimed it had recorded audio of a yowie in a remote region on the NSW-Queensland border.^[26][29]
• In June 2013, a Lismore resident and music videographer claimed to have seen a yowie just north of Bexhill.^[30]

In the mid-1970s, the Queanbeyan Festival Board and 2CA together offered a AUD200,000 reward to anyone who could capture and present a yowie: the reward is yet to be claimed.^[31][32]

Northern Territory

In the late 1990s, there were several reports of yowie sightings in the area around Acacia Hills.^[12] One such sighting was by mango farmer Katrina Tucker who reported in 1997 being just metres away from a hairy humanoid creature on her property.^[12] Photographs of the footprint were collected at the time.^[12]

Queensland

The Springbrook region in south-east Queensland has had more yowie reports than anywhere else in Australia.^[11] In 1977, former Queensland Senator Bill O'Chee reported to the Gold Coast Bulletin he had seen a yowie while on a school trip in Springbrook.^[10][11] O'Chee compared the creature he saw to the character Chewbacca from Star Wars,^[33] telling reporters that the creature he saw had been over 3 metres tall.^[34]

A persisting story is that of the Mulgowie Yowie, last reported to be seen in 2001.^[35]

In March 2014, two yowie searchers claimed to have filmed the yowie in South Queensland using an infrared tree camera, collected fur samples, and found large footprints.^[36][37] Later that year, a Gympie man told media he had encountered yowies on several occasions, including conversing with, and teaching some English to, a very large male yowie in the bush north east of Gympie,^[38] and several people in Port Douglas claimed to have seen yowies, near Mowbray and at the Rocky Point range.^[39]

Prominent yowie hunters

• Rex Gilroy. Since the mid-1970s, paranormal enthusiast Rex Gilroy, a self-employed cryptozoologist, has attempted to popularise the Yowie.^[40][41][42] Mr Gilroy claims to have collected over 3000 reports of them and proposed that they comprise a relict population of extinct ape or Homo species.^[43][44] Rex Gilroy believes that the yowie is related to the North American Bigfoot.^[45] Along with his partner Heather Gilroy, Gilroy has spent fifty years amassing his yowie collection,^[46] saying he has identified four different species of the yowie, which he believes are a sub-species of Homo erectus.^[47]
• Tim the Yowie Man. A published author who claims to have seen a yowie in the Brindabella Ranges in 1994.^[26][48] Since then, Tim the Yowie Man has investigated yowie sightings and other paranormal phenomena.^[49] He also writes a regular column in Australian newspapers The Canberra Times and The Sydney Morning Herald. In 2004, Tim the Yowie Man won a legal case against Cadbury, a popular British confectionery company.^[50] Cadbury had claimed that his moniker was too similar to their range of Yowie confectionery.^[51]
• Gary Opit, ABC Local Radio Wildlife Programmer and environmental scientist.^[52]

See also

• Bigfoot
• Barmanou
• Bunyip, a water-dwelling creature from Australian Aboriginal mythology
• Yowie (chocolate), a line of toys based on the Yowie
• Yara-ma-yha-who, a creature from Australian Aboriginal mythology
• List of topics characterized as pseudoscience

Notes

References