February 24, 2022 • 19 mins
Since the early days of European arrival, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people have claimed to have seen a two-metre tall, hairy, ape-like figure stalking the Australian bush, right across the country. So what is this mythical creature we know as the yowie? Join us as we look at the legend and meet a man who has devoted decades tracking it down.
Host: Chris Hook
Producer: Malin Hägglund
Special thanks to Dean Harrison for yowie recording
Guests:
- Australian Yowie Research founder Dean Harrison
- Former ranger, wildlife expert and radio host Gary Opit
- Graham Seal, Professor of Folklore at Curtin University
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
You are listening to seven New Spectrum search for Australia's Bigfoot.
(00:42):
The audio you just heard was picked up by Queensland
man Dean Harrison, and he believes it to be the
sound of a yowie. Harrison is a dedicated researcher searching
for the mythological creature that is also known as Australia's Bigfoot.
The Yowi is said to be a muscular, hairy, two
meter tall, eat like beasts that stalks the bush right
(01:02):
across the length and breadth of our continent, and like Bigfoot,
there is no scientific evidence of its existence. However, there
are many people who claim to have seen it or
seeing proof of its presence, and the creature lives large
in First Nations oral histories right across the country. Sometimes
(01:23):
it is known as the Yahoo, sometimes the hairy Man,
sometimes in Bangala Lakou. There are many many other names,
but the idea is a consistent one. For this episode,
we reached out to a range of First Nations people
working as rangers, sardas and academics, but nobody was available
to join us. However, as First Nations academic and archaeologist
(01:44):
to Sinta Colmatri, has written to talk about Aboriginal myth
is not correct. Such stories have real world implications and
are the foundations of first nation's song, dance, and language.
So when the British arrived in seventeen eighty eight, contact
between the two cultures would certainly have informed European understanding
of the new world around them. Believed that the new
(02:06):
arrival's first accounts of what would later known as the
Yali were as early as seventeen ninety five, but since
then thousands of people have claimed to have seen this
mythological beast or or seen evidence that it's around. Founder
of Australian Yawi research, Dean Harrison is among them, and
his encounters have been closer than most.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
So I came home at about eleven o'clock at night, parked
the car, and I was walking down the driveway to
the front door, and in the darkness behind the house,
in the swamp, was this noise. And this noise was
so booming and guard all made my hair stand on
in It was something of like I've never heard before.
(02:55):
Now I know the sound of koalas you probably do too.
Now they can make a pretty savage noise. This was
not a Koala.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
People are not necessarily saying they don't exist, but simply
that we can't prove they exist.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
That's Professor Graham Seal. He writes and researches Australian folklore
and teaches at Curtin University's Australian Studies program. He's devoted
some of his work to looking at the folklore around
the Yooi, and he notes that cultures across the world
have thrown up similar creatures, such as the Yeti in
Hinmalan culture, the yerin in China, or the Bigfoot or
Sasquatch of North America. So when Europeans make contact with
(03:29):
First Nations people, one culture's story is used with the others.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
And from a folklore point of view, that's fine because
folklores generally suspend their disbelief. If you like, when they're
talking to people that what you believe it to be true,
well that's fine. I believe that you believe it. And
as I said, many people do believe those things and
actively involved, particularly in relation to the Yao, in trying
to track them down.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Thean's encounter was way back in nineteen ninety five and
he was living in Mount tambourine in the Gold Coast hinterland.
It's lush wild country, rainforest rich and incredibly diverse flora
and fauna, and renown across the world for its incredible
bird life. Being was a young bloke then, barely in
his mid twenties, and he knew a thing or two
about Australian animals. That sound, it gripped him. He was frozen.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Now on top of the noise. It was bipedal. You'd
hear it walking treading through the swamp, trudge trudge, trudge,
making vocalization and menacing vocalization. And then it starts to
rip foliage out of the ground and you hear the
roots come apart and out of the ground. And then
(04:41):
it proceeds to throw the foliage which goes through the
head yeah, and kicks a tree, ounces off that and
lands on the ground. So now here's three things. Vocal capacity,
the factor is bipedal on two legs, and it has hands.
It obviously needs hands to yeldccomplished this. They ruled out
(05:02):
everything he stood watching. Now he had a choice. He
could go and grab his torch from its hook behind
the front door and find the source of that sound,
or he could go through the front.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Door, lock it and never look back. His heart beating,
Dean walk into his house, slam the door closed and
locked it tight. That was Dean's first encounter, but it
would not be his last. And what he believes he
saw that first time, the way he describes it is
strikingly similar to other witness accounts over hundreds of years.
(05:35):
Their descriptions, their attempts to capture the extraordinary sight on paper,
all bear the same characteristics they describe, and they show
two meter tall shapes with big heads, no necks, and
dark hair covering the whole body. Two years later, Dean
had moved down the road to another little town in
southeast Queensland called Ormo. Again, he was surrounded by lush bushland,
(05:56):
full of life, all kinds of life.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
I was trying to lose some weight at the time,
and I was jogging at night, and I jogged through
this little bush reserve between two townships on this particular
night again roughly about eleven o'clock. I'd stopped on the
verge of this track, and this track was very narrow.
You could reach your hands out on both sides and
you would touch the polage. I'd stopped, and I stopped
(06:29):
to make a phone call. And it's very lucky that
I stopped to make this phone call, because if I didn't,
I don't think i'd be here today.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
It was a classic Queensland night, warm still, but a
good time for a jog out of the blazing sun.
So as he made his call, Dean moved to the
side of the narrow whiny bush track to make sure
he wasn't in anybody's way. There was nothing but the ambience,
sounds of the Queensland bush, the odd bird, the sikata's buzzing.
Dean was ploaked in darkness, with just the vegas specion
(07:00):
of the path in front of him. The trees around
him merged into an inky dark stain. But moments after
he stopped running and began talking, Dean's flown conversation came
to a sudden halt. The crack of snapping branches and
rustling shrubs echoed in the night air, and Dean realized
that he was not alone. But he wasn't worried, not yet.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
And to me, it sounded like a group of people,
which I put down to was a group of kids
that perhaps snuck out at nights. But this was like
a Tuesday night, and I thought, well, that's kind of
why I was sort of week night. We didn't do
that until it was the weekends. The noise subsided, and
I thought no more of it. I thought, okay, they
found their way out. A couple of minutes later, he
(07:44):
hid this twig snat. But it's a little bit closer
this time, and again, a little bit closer, and a
little bit closer.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Now.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Every time it mad major noise, it would stop, deliberately,
stopped before proceeding again. And then here as it's getting close,
to hear the leaves part and something pushed through the leaves,
and then you hear cracking, and stop again. Now it's
getting quite close. And I've said to the person on
(08:11):
the other end of the line, I said, I've got
someone sneaking up on the here. I want to find
out what's on his mind.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Strange things happen in the bush and most of them
are done by strange people. Dean quickly realized that what
he'd heard was not kids, not teenagers having a laugh.
This was someone else, someone who was tracking him, and
they were hiding right at the bush line behind him,
keeping themselves camouflaged in the inky black. Dean lowered the
phone and began to prepare himself, but his body already
(08:43):
was It knew somehow before his mind did. He froze
as chills washed across his body, sending every hair standing
on end, and Dean steeled himself for what was to come.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Uh there at the sixth sense feeling of knowing if
I turned around and made eye contact with this person
or whatever it is, it's going to turn exponentially worse.
I had to turn a little bit. I wanted to
get a little bit of a view, but I didn't
want to make eye contact. And here I see this
(09:18):
lassy silhouette it would have been seven feet tall, standing
there in a bushlight right behind me, and I knew
I was in trouble right there. And then there was
just such a horrifying feeling. You know, you've never seen
anything like this before in your whole life, and you're alone.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Being stood watching, waiting, listening. He's trying to move. He
slowly readed himself to bolt home.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
The moment my foot left the ground, Arah came out
from behind me, this massive, ballowing raw and the likes
of which I've never heard it was even worse than
the one previews, and all the dogs in the area
just were crazy or acreages. He's taking the bushline and
he's come around for my left. Now. On every footstep
(10:12):
he made, his diaphragm would bounce there on each step,
and each step was thunderous, and he came him weep
over the logs and back down on the other side,
and he'd grab all the trees, and he's in the
trees for pelling himself to go faster and faster. Within
no time, he's right beside me, and I just thought,
(10:36):
this is it, this is it, this is this is
the end of my life.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Suddenly there is a shift. The creature runs ahead of him,
jumps out and faces him, cutting off his path home,
his path to safety. It lunges and Dean jumps to
his left, taking off the other way. His heart racing,
Dean finally dares to look back.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
So I've I've finally just run up to I'm looking
over my shoulder. He's turned around and he's walked back
to the bushline, and he's turned around and he's squatted
there just in the bushline, watching me. And I was
popping and I was panting, and I was beside myself,
going did you hear that? And I said what was it?
Speaker 1 (11:19):
I said, I know exactly what that was.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
So after you got through an experience such as that,
where you truly believe you just about lost your life,
you want answers, you you want to know, You want
to know all about what this is.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Those terrifying moments more than two decades ago, changed Dean's
life forever. In nineteen ninety seven, he launched Dean Harrison's
Australian Yowie Research, a website devoted to tracking alleged sightings
across the country, as well as witnessing counts, drawings, recordings,
and historical accounts reaching back to the earliest days of
European arrival. But Dean is not alone in his search
(12:08):
for the Yawi. The myriad reports and the common threads
that run through witness claims have captivated many others. Gary
Opitz is a former ranger and wildlife expert. He writes
books and essays about Australian wildlife. Gary also hosts the
radio show on ABC North Coast, talking to callers about
their wildlife experiences and helping them identify the various birds, mammals,
(12:30):
and reptiles that they come across. He's been doing the
show for more than twenty years. He's helped listeners work
out the species of hundreds of wildlife over that time.
But during those years, Gary estimates he has received around
one hundred reports of fauna that is unknown on the
Australian mainland, and many sightings of beasts matching the description
of the yuri. Among them, he has been able to
(12:52):
weave together the common threads into a pattern of behavior.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
The animals are generally unaggressive when they are encountered. Generally
the animal turns and runs for its life. However, they
can be aggressive. They're a bit like they act a
bit like gorillas in that they'll make a charge.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
The signs similar patterns of behavior. Gary says his witnesses
also report similarity in appearance among the creatures they claim
they have seen.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Generally, they they encounter a very gorilla like animal, or
you could call it a very hairy man like animal,
but an animal that stands around about one and a
half to two meters or larger than that in height,
with a head somewhat human like or otherwise gorilla like,
(13:56):
or even a rung a tongue like very powerfully built.
They all described very powerful body, very muscular chest. The
head is perched on the shoulders a bit like a
football a very muscular footballer. There's not much sign of
a neck.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Now. Gary is the first to admit that he is
a little skeptical. He spent a lot of time alone
in the bush, both with his zoology cap on and
during the years he worked as a ranger. There's so
many of those calls into his show describes so much
that was similar that Gary's doubts began to wane. Besides
the striking similarities in physical descriptions, the noise the animals
(14:36):
make also has common elements, and that is something Gary
has experienced out by himself in the bush. One day,
Gary heard the most extraordinary thing. He describes it like this.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Ye ye yeay.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
Bellowing me like calls. And then when I heard these calls,
I was actually astounded. And that's when I first realized
that this animal actually exists. And three dingos started howl
and giving it oh howling called and this and other animal.
You could compare it with the dingos, and it was
(15:11):
much more powerful. And after the dingos that run out
of breath, this animal was still giving it incredibly powerful roaring,
bellowing calls. Nothing like the bellowing grunts of a kohar
or the bellowing of cattle. This is quite a different autu,
much more powerful. And then another occasion I heard once
(15:33):
again around about one hundred bucks, and they are in
groups of free and I was like, oh oh, and
then it would gurgle in between, so they go now like,
(15:53):
nothing makes calls like that.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Harry Obts has now completed a lot of research into
the possibility that Australia's bigfoot is out there somewhere. His
working theory is that if the animal exists, it is
not a herbivore, that is, an animal that feeds on plants,
because that will result in large tracts of vegetation being
destroyed as the yaoi attempts to consume enough food to
keep it going. It would also make itself more visible,
(16:19):
as the constant grazing would require it to be out
and about for much longer. Instead, he thinks the yaoi
is carnivorous, a meat eater living in small groups covering
large tracts of land. Putting aside the issue of whether
the yaowi truly is out there. Why do these stories
flourish in so many cultures over so many centuries. Is
there something in us, something deep within our psyche, that
(16:42):
needs desperately to believe they could be true? Professor Graham
Seal has a few theories about that too.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
It seems to be that we like to scare ourselves
for reasons nobody really knows. Certainly I do add, But
those stories are widely spread around the world, similar stories
about yetties as you know, of course, and the abominable snowmen,
sasquatch and all sorts of other creatures, the big hairy
(17:10):
things that live out in the wild and frightened people
or even they eat them sometimes. And yeah, so it's
one of those things that we seem to need to tell,
the kind of stories we need to tell each other
and share with each other, like a lot of folklore.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Clearly, the idea speaks to a very deep need within
us and the way we need to understand the world
around us. We think we know all there is to know,
but do we really Maybe not?
Speaker 4 (17:37):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
The evidence thing is there obviously, you know, we like
to think we're a rational society and that we run
everything scientifically, which we don't, of course, but nevertheless we're
supposed to. So when we can't present evidence of something
particularly as unusual as a yaoi or have a thing
bun yit, whatever it might be, now, actual scientifically provable
(17:58):
evidence will then people tend to think, oh, well, it's
just a story or a bit of a yarn that
someone's made up. However, I think that there are an
awful lot of those stories. Everybody can't be making them up.
People certainly believe that they're seeing these things and that
they exist, and that they are very much part of
the Australian bush. He thought, so, I think very much
(18:19):
part of that culture that we have about the bush
and the idea that it's still got mysteries about it.
I think that's another thing we like to think. Even
though we're a highly urbanized society and very modern, etc.
We still like to think. I think that out there
somewhere in the bush, in the outback, the dead Heart,
whatever you want to call it, or the mountain, simply
that there's something we can't know about. It's a bit
(18:41):
of nature that is out there and it's beyond our control.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
So true or not scientifically provable or not, we as
humans love the sense of the mysterious, the sense of
the unknowable. Once we're out there enjoying the wilderness, this
seems little as unknowable as a vast expanse of the
Australian bush. You've been listening to seven News Spectrum the
(19:12):
Search for Australia's Big Foot. A big thanks to Dean
Harrison for supplying audio recordings from his investigations, and thank
you too to Gary Opitz and Professor Graham Seal for
their insights. This episode was voiced by me Chris Hook,
an audio produced by Meline Hagland.
You are listening to seven New Spectrum search for Australia's Bigfoot.
(00:42):
The audio you just heard was picked up by Queensland
man Dean Harrison, and he believes it to be the
sound of a yowie. Harrison is a dedicated researcher searching
for the mythological creature that is also known as Australia's Bigfoot.
The Yowi is said to be a muscular, hairy, two
meter tall, eat like beasts that stalks the bush right
(01:02):
across the length and breadth of our continent, and like Bigfoot,
there is no scientific evidence of its existence. However, there
are many people who claim to have seen it or
seeing proof of its presence, and the creature lives large
in First Nations oral histories right across the country. Sometimes
(01:23):
it is known as the Yahoo, sometimes the hairy Man,
sometimes in Bangala Lakou. There are many many other names,
but the idea is a consistent one. For this episode,
we reached out to a range of First Nations people
working as rangers, sardas and academics, but nobody was available
to join us. However, as First Nations academic and archaeologist
(01:44):
to Sinta Colmatri, has written to talk about Aboriginal myth
is not correct. Such stories have real world implications and
are the foundations of first nation's song, dance, and language.
So when the British arrived in seventeen eighty eight, contact
between the two cultures would certainly have informed European understanding
of the new world around them. Believed that the new
(02:06):
arrival's first accounts of what would later known as the
Yali were as early as seventeen ninety five, but since
then thousands of people have claimed to have seen this
mythological beast or or seen evidence that it's around. Founder
of Australian Yawi research, Dean Harrison is among them, and
his encounters have been closer than most.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
So I came home at about eleven o'clock at night, parked
the car, and I was walking down the driveway to
the front door, and in the darkness behind the house,
in the swamp, was this noise. And this noise was
so booming and guard all made my hair stand on
in It was something of like I've never heard before.
(02:55):
Now I know the sound of koalas you probably do too.
Now they can make a pretty savage noise. This was
not a Koala.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
People are not necessarily saying they don't exist, but simply
that we can't prove they exist.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
That's Professor Graham Seal. He writes and researches Australian folklore
and teaches at Curtin University's Australian Studies program. He's devoted
some of his work to looking at the folklore around
the Yooi, and he notes that cultures across the world
have thrown up similar creatures, such as the Yeti in
Hinmalan culture, the yerin in China, or the Bigfoot or
Sasquatch of North America. So when Europeans make contact with
(03:29):
First Nations people, one culture's story is used with the others.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
And from a folklore point of view, that's fine because
folklores generally suspend their disbelief. If you like, when they're
talking to people that what you believe it to be true,
well that's fine. I believe that you believe it. And
as I said, many people do believe those things and
actively involved, particularly in relation to the Yao, in trying
to track them down.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Thean's encounter was way back in nineteen ninety five and
he was living in Mount tambourine in the Gold Coast hinterland.
It's lush wild country, rainforest rich and incredibly diverse flora
and fauna, and renown across the world for its incredible
bird life. Being was a young bloke then, barely in
his mid twenties, and he knew a thing or two
about Australian animals. That sound, it gripped him. He was frozen.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Now on top of the noise. It was bipedal. You'd
hear it walking treading through the swamp, trudge trudge, trudge,
making vocalization and menacing vocalization. And then it starts to
rip foliage out of the ground and you hear the
roots come apart and out of the ground. And then
(04:41):
it proceeds to throw the foliage which goes through the
head yeah, and kicks a tree, ounces off that and
lands on the ground. So now here's three things. Vocal capacity,
the factor is bipedal on two legs, and it has hands.
It obviously needs hands to yeldccomplished this. They ruled out
(05:02):
everything he stood watching. Now he had a choice. He
could go and grab his torch from its hook behind
the front door and find the source of that sound,
or he could go through the front.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Door, lock it and never look back. His heart beating,
Dean walk into his house, slam the door closed and
locked it tight. That was Dean's first encounter, but it
would not be his last. And what he believes he
saw that first time, the way he describes it is
strikingly similar to other witness accounts over hundreds of years.
(05:35):
Their descriptions, their attempts to capture the extraordinary sight on paper,
all bear the same characteristics they describe, and they show
two meter tall shapes with big heads, no necks, and
dark hair covering the whole body. Two years later, Dean
had moved down the road to another little town in
southeast Queensland called Ormo. Again, he was surrounded by lush bushland,
(05:56):
full of life, all kinds of life.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
I was trying to lose some weight at the time,
and I was jogging at night, and I jogged through
this little bush reserve between two townships on this particular
night again roughly about eleven o'clock. I'd stopped on the
verge of this track, and this track was very narrow.
You could reach your hands out on both sides and
you would touch the polage. I'd stopped, and I stopped
(06:29):
to make a phone call. And it's very lucky that
I stopped to make this phone call, because if I didn't,
I don't think i'd be here today.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
It was a classic Queensland night, warm still, but a
good time for a jog out of the blazing sun.
So as he made his call, Dean moved to the
side of the narrow whiny bush track to make sure
he wasn't in anybody's way. There was nothing but the ambience,
sounds of the Queensland bush, the odd bird, the sikata's buzzing.
Dean was ploaked in darkness, with just the vegas specion
(07:00):
of the path in front of him. The trees around
him merged into an inky dark stain. But moments after
he stopped running and began talking, Dean's flown conversation came
to a sudden halt. The crack of snapping branches and
rustling shrubs echoed in the night air, and Dean realized
that he was not alone. But he wasn't worried, not yet.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
And to me, it sounded like a group of people,
which I put down to was a group of kids
that perhaps snuck out at nights. But this was like
a Tuesday night, and I thought, well, that's kind of
why I was sort of week night. We didn't do
that until it was the weekends. The noise subsided, and
I thought no more of it. I thought, okay, they
found their way out. A couple of minutes later, he
(07:44):
hid this twig snat. But it's a little bit closer
this time, and again, a little bit closer, and a
little bit closer.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Now.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Every time it mad major noise, it would stop, deliberately,
stopped before proceeding again. And then here as it's getting close,
to hear the leaves part and something pushed through the leaves,
and then you hear cracking, and stop again. Now it's
getting quite close. And I've said to the person on
(08:11):
the other end of the line, I said, I've got
someone sneaking up on the here. I want to find
out what's on his mind.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Strange things happen in the bush and most of them
are done by strange people. Dean quickly realized that what
he'd heard was not kids, not teenagers having a laugh.
This was someone else, someone who was tracking him, and
they were hiding right at the bush line behind him,
keeping themselves camouflaged in the inky black. Dean lowered the
phone and began to prepare himself, but his body already
(08:43):
was It knew somehow before his mind did. He froze
as chills washed across his body, sending every hair standing
on end, and Dean steeled himself for what was to come.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Uh there at the sixth sense feeling of knowing if
I turned around and made eye contact with this person
or whatever it is, it's going to turn exponentially worse.
I had to turn a little bit. I wanted to
get a little bit of a view, but I didn't
want to make eye contact. And here I see this
(09:18):
lassy silhouette it would have been seven feet tall, standing
there in a bushlight right behind me, and I knew
I was in trouble right there. And then there was
just such a horrifying feeling. You know, you've never seen
anything like this before in your whole life, and you're alone.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Being stood watching, waiting, listening. He's trying to move. He
slowly readed himself to bolt home.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
The moment my foot left the ground, Arah came out
from behind me, this massive, ballowing raw and the likes
of which I've never heard it was even worse than
the one previews, and all the dogs in the area
just were crazy or acreages. He's taking the bushline and
he's come around for my left. Now. On every footstep
(10:12):
he made, his diaphragm would bounce there on each step,
and each step was thunderous, and he came him weep
over the logs and back down on the other side,
and he'd grab all the trees, and he's in the
trees for pelling himself to go faster and faster. Within
no time, he's right beside me, and I just thought,
(10:36):
this is it, this is it, this is this is
the end of my life.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Suddenly there is a shift. The creature runs ahead of him,
jumps out and faces him, cutting off his path home,
his path to safety. It lunges and Dean jumps to
his left, taking off the other way. His heart racing,
Dean finally dares to look back.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
So I've I've finally just run up to I'm looking
over my shoulder. He's turned around and he's walked back
to the bushline, and he's turned around and he's squatted
there just in the bushline, watching me. And I was
popping and I was panting, and I was beside myself,
going did you hear that? And I said what was it?
Speaker 1 (11:19):
I said, I know exactly what that was.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
So after you got through an experience such as that,
where you truly believe you just about lost your life,
you want answers, you you want to know, You want
to know all about what this is.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Those terrifying moments more than two decades ago, changed Dean's
life forever. In nineteen ninety seven, he launched Dean Harrison's
Australian Yowie Research, a website devoted to tracking alleged sightings
across the country, as well as witnessing counts, drawings, recordings,
and historical accounts reaching back to the earliest days of
European arrival. But Dean is not alone in his search
(12:08):
for the Yawi. The myriad reports and the common threads
that run through witness claims have captivated many others. Gary
Opitz is a former ranger and wildlife expert. He writes
books and essays about Australian wildlife. Gary also hosts the
radio show on ABC North Coast, talking to callers about
their wildlife experiences and helping them identify the various birds, mammals,
(12:30):
and reptiles that they come across. He's been doing the
show for more than twenty years. He's helped listeners work
out the species of hundreds of wildlife over that time.
But during those years, Gary estimates he has received around
one hundred reports of fauna that is unknown on the
Australian mainland, and many sightings of beasts matching the description
of the yuri. Among them, he has been able to
(12:52):
weave together the common threads into a pattern of behavior.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
The animals are generally unaggressive when they are encountered. Generally
the animal turns and runs for its life. However, they
can be aggressive. They're a bit like they act a
bit like gorillas in that they'll make a charge.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
The signs similar patterns of behavior. Gary says his witnesses
also report similarity in appearance among the creatures they claim
they have seen.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Generally, they they encounter a very gorilla like animal, or
you could call it a very hairy man like animal,
but an animal that stands around about one and a
half to two meters or larger than that in height,
with a head somewhat human like or otherwise gorilla like,
(13:56):
or even a rung a tongue like very powerfully built.
They all described very powerful body, very muscular chest. The
head is perched on the shoulders a bit like a
football a very muscular footballer. There's not much sign of
a neck.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Now. Gary is the first to admit that he is
a little skeptical. He spent a lot of time alone
in the bush, both with his zoology cap on and
during the years he worked as a ranger. There's so
many of those calls into his show describes so much
that was similar that Gary's doubts began to wane. Besides
the striking similarities in physical descriptions, the noise the animals
(14:36):
make also has common elements, and that is something Gary
has experienced out by himself in the bush. One day,
Gary heard the most extraordinary thing. He describes it like this.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Ye ye yeay.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
Bellowing me like calls. And then when I heard these calls,
I was actually astounded. And that's when I first realized
that this animal actually exists. And three dingos started howl
and giving it oh howling called and this and other animal.
You could compare it with the dingos, and it was
(15:11):
much more powerful. And after the dingos that run out
of breath, this animal was still giving it incredibly powerful roaring,
bellowing calls. Nothing like the bellowing grunts of a kohar
or the bellowing of cattle. This is quite a different autu,
much more powerful. And then another occasion I heard once
(15:33):
again around about one hundred bucks, and they are in
groups of free and I was like, oh oh, and
then it would gurgle in between, so they go now like,
(15:53):
nothing makes calls like that.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Harry Obts has now completed a lot of research into
the possibility that Australia's bigfoot is out there somewhere. His
working theory is that if the animal exists, it is
not a herbivore, that is, an animal that feeds on plants,
because that will result in large tracts of vegetation being
destroyed as the yaoi attempts to consume enough food to
keep it going. It would also make itself more visible,
(16:19):
as the constant grazing would require it to be out
and about for much longer. Instead, he thinks the yaoi
is carnivorous, a meat eater living in small groups covering
large tracts of land. Putting aside the issue of whether
the yaowi truly is out there. Why do these stories
flourish in so many cultures over so many centuries. Is
there something in us, something deep within our psyche, that
(16:42):
needs desperately to believe they could be true? Professor Graham
Seal has a few theories about that too.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
It seems to be that we like to scare ourselves
for reasons nobody really knows. Certainly I do add, But
those stories are widely spread around the world, similar stories
about yetties as you know, of course, and the abominable snowmen,
sasquatch and all sorts of other creatures, the big hairy
(17:10):
things that live out in the wild and frightened people
or even they eat them sometimes. And yeah, so it's
one of those things that we seem to need to tell,
the kind of stories we need to tell each other
and share with each other, like a lot of folklore.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Clearly, the idea speaks to a very deep need within
us and the way we need to understand the world
around us. We think we know all there is to know,
but do we really Maybe not?
Speaker 4 (17:37):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
The evidence thing is there obviously, you know, we like
to think we're a rational society and that we run
everything scientifically, which we don't, of course, but nevertheless we're
supposed to. So when we can't present evidence of something
particularly as unusual as a yaoi or have a thing
bun yit, whatever it might be, now, actual scientifically provable
(17:58):
evidence will then people tend to think, oh, well, it's
just a story or a bit of a yarn that
someone's made up. However, I think that there are an
awful lot of those stories. Everybody can't be making them up.
People certainly believe that they're seeing these things and that
they exist, and that they are very much part of
the Australian bush. He thought, so, I think very much
(18:19):
part of that culture that we have about the bush
and the idea that it's still got mysteries about it.
I think that's another thing we like to think. Even
though we're a highly urbanized society and very modern, etc.
We still like to think. I think that out there
somewhere in the bush, in the outback, the dead Heart,
whatever you want to call it, or the mountain, simply
that there's something we can't know about. It's a bit
(18:41):
of nature that is out there and it's beyond our control.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
So true or not scientifically provable or not, we as
humans love the sense of the mysterious, the sense of
the unknowable. Once we're out there enjoying the wilderness, this
seems little as unknowable as a vast expanse of the
Australian bush. You've been listening to seven News Spectrum the
(19:12):
Search for Australia's Big Foot. A big thanks to Dean
Harrison for supplying audio recordings from his investigations, and thank
you too to Gary Opitz and Professor Graham Seal for
their insights. This episode was voiced by me Chris Hook,
an audio produced by Meline Hagland.
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