Database: Sightings & Evidence 1910-1919

[admin]

Sussex Inlet About 1910

Large hairy Beast

During the course of a 1979 Yowie investigation on the NSW far South Coast, I was told the following early settler tales by Mr. Alf Collier of Sussex Inlet, who will figure prominently later in our search for the 'hairy man'.

The tradition concerns his father-in-law, Mr. Norman Alsop who, as a 10 year old child, lived on his families property at the foot of Sassafras Mountain near Sussex Inlet about 1910. One day he and his brother carrying a bucket and accompanied by their two Kangaroo Dogs went to get water from a nearby creek. Suddenly they were surprised by a large hairy beast which ran across the track in front of them, from out of surrounding bush, frightening them. The dogs ran off terrified, their tails between their legs.

When the boys ran home they thought it had been their father playing a trick on them. "Ah, we saw you Dad," they said, but the father who was a tall man denied having left the house, and although the boys thought he had dressed up in a kangaroo skin he firmly denied it. As their had apparently been a number of reported sightings claims in the district of big, hairy humanoid creatures their father thereafter never again allowed them to go for water alone.....

Mount Victoria ,Victoria Falls, Grose Valley 1890's-1900's

Hairy gorilla-like male creature 1910

Mount Victoria residents at the time recalled that, during the 1800's, early settlers believed, on the basis of sightings, that a 'family' of yowies lived in the bush on the Victoria Falls road three miles east of the township above the Grose Valley. It is said in about 1910, two men were bushwalking in the Victoria Falls area when a three-metre-tall, hairy gorilla-like male creature charged at them from out of dense scrub.

He had a large rock in his hand which he hurled at the men, hitting one of them and killing him instantly. His companion somehow managed to run from the monster. The next day, a party of men with guns and dogs returned to the scene with the survivor, but apart from some blood on the ground his companion's body was nowhere to be found. It was assumed his body had been carried off by the man-beast.....

Ally Valley Forests 1910

Young Gigantopithecine

One peaceful, sunny morning in 1910, deep in the Allyn Valley forests, two men were engaged in sawing a cedar log in half. [Note: The old crosscut saw method of sawing meant a lot of time was spent in a recumbent position on one knee, sometimes both, and the head in such a position as to restrict the viewing area.] They suddenly got that eerie feeling that they were not alone. Pausing a moment, they could hardly believe what they saw.

"Strewth, when we saw what it was we actually believed for a few moments we'd taken leave of our senses"....., said one of the men years later when recounting the incident. Standing behind, and only about 1.6 m away from one of them was the weirdest creature they would ever meet up with in a lifetime spent in the bush.

"Scarce four feet tall, but tremendous width and thickness of body, covered with short, jet black and very curly, coarse looking hair, arms that reached to well below its knees; feet big enough for any three or four ordinary men, bull neck whereon rested a head and facial features like those big apes you see in the kids books."

"Dunno how long we gaped at it, but it made no sound nor offered to go for us, its big black eyes seemed to say it was just as flabbergasted as we were. When we got our wits back we left everything and went as fast as we could for the camp, about half a mile away."

Having arrived back at camp and having no firearms, they stayed just long enough to eat a hurried meal, pack food and other belongings, then left for home, fully expecting to see or hear their uncouth looking visitor arrive any minute and perhaps start after them, or perhaps even worse, arrive with others of its kind! What had these men seen? Their description, if accurate, seems to suggest something closer to an ape than the more human-like Yowie. A young Gigantopithecine perhaps?

New England Ranges 1910

Human-like Giant

Around 1910, outside Tamworth in the foothills of the New England ranges, two men hunting in mountains behind the town found two enormous footprints imprinted in soil. Exploring further in the direction of the footprints, they came upon "a human-like giant about 7 ft in height". It had, they said a powerful muscular body and arms and short light coloured hair on it's head and body. The manbeast moved off into scrub.

"We let him walk away without shooting him, because we feared we might be shooting a man that had gone wild when he was a young bloke", they said later. The men went for help in the town and later returned with other bushmen; but apart from the large tracks, the mystery hominid was nowhere to be found.

Today the 'hairy man' remains a prominent feature of local [New England] folklore, and recently made stone implements lately coming to light in the mountain country behind Nundle certainly suggest these hominid primitives from another age are still with us.

The interesting fact about these recently-manufactured stone implements is that they differ little from other, far more ancient 'dawn tools', lately beginning to turn up around the shores of long vanished, ice-age lakes in the New England and Central Western districts of NSW, and which resemble those once manufactured in Asia by Homo erectus, the ancestor of modern humans.

Atherton District 1910

Stone-age Peoples

One former bushman who took an interest in these traditions was the late Lou Jessup of Rockhampton, who in 1970 wrote to me with the following stories, gathered in Far North Qld and the Northern Territory in the course of his travels. He writes: "I am convinced that old blackfellow's legends of a race of giant Aborigines is based upon fact, and that some of these stone-age people survived into quite recent times."

"I once saw an old 'Young Australians' annual of 1910. In a chapter on life in the Qld bush, I read a story of an incident that took place in the Atherton district, inland from Cairns in 1897, when a party of 'several native men of prodigious height, and three black women of slightly smaller proportions and their piccaninnies' were seen on the edge of a property by the owner, a Mr Bayley and two jackaroos."

Sumatra 1910

Sedapa

Spread throughout the Malaysian subregion, which comprises the foot of the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo and Java is a mass of Asian folklore concerning small to giant-size hominids reminiscent of Australian Homo erectus-type races. In Sumatra there is the 'Orang Pendek', or 'Sedapa' meaning "Little man".

He is described by Sumatrans as being man-sized, very hairy, walks and runs like a human, although it is said to have a face more ape than man in appearance. Its legs are also shorted than a normal human's, and it has longer arms.

This description was give of one of these creatures in 1910, by an overseer on an estate, who was it while surveying a large tract of forest land in the Barisans Mountains near Loobuk Salasik. He observed the creature at a distance of 15 yards. The mystery manimal gave the man and his workers a disagreeable look, then retreated back into the bush.

New Zealand - Coromandel 1910

Male hominid Giant-2m Tall Female

Back in 1910 a hairy male hominid giant a good 3m tall was claimed seen standing in a field by a Coromandel farmer, Some months later a 2m tall female, ape-like creature appeared on a creek edge at another nearby farm and was seen by the startled property owner, his wife and children.

The amount of information obtained from this region has encouraged Heather and I to make repeated visits here. It is an area where Moehau encounters with Europeans date back over 100 years.

Bega District 1912

7ft dark haired-upright walking ape-like Beast

During October, 1912 a Melbourne surveyor, Mr. Phillip Mills and two geologists were camped on a mountainside in the Bega district. One night, as the men sat around their campfire having their evening meal, Mr. Mills spotted a dark tall shape, illuminated by the glow of the campfire moving among trees. To the horror of all, the mystery visitor emerged into full view, a mere several feet from them; a 7 ft (2.1 m) dark haired, upright walking, ape-like beast.

He appeared very muscular, with big, powerful arms and legs, big feet and large hands. His genitals appeared about normal man-sized and he looked at the men with a face somewhere between ape and human in appearance. One man grabbed for a nearby revolver, but as he did so, the man-monster turned and walked away, as if quite unconcerned. The man-ape seemed to be inquisitive and made no attempt to harm us, and I motioned to my companion not to shoot", said Mr. Mills to a journalist many years later.....

The Saddle 1912

Three stories of a Thing

Several kilometres south-west of Carey's Peak, the second highest point in the Barrington Tops Range in a northerly direction from Mt Royal, a great razorbacked spur branches off from the Range, running southwards for about 13 km distant, where a huge dome-shaped peak rises well over 1000 m above sea-level, between the Allyn and Paterson valleys.

Beyond the Knob, or Mt Allyn, [its correct name], the range continues as the watershed of the two valleys. Between the Knob and the peak nearest it on the northern side, is a long deep depression called 'The Saddle'. It was here that the following three stories took place about 1912, as related by two old Cedar getters to Mr. E L. Bates during the 1930's.

The first story took place one night when they and a mate were camped in a large bark hut erected on top of the saddle ridge.

"We all turned in early that night after a long hard days work amongst the timber and up to that time had never seen or heard anything unusual, and were hoping for a good night's sleep; but about 9pm we were awakened by our three dogs barking and growling in an unusually savage way, quite unlike their average manner of greeting anything or anybody who might venture near the camp."

"A few moments later we became aware of a tremendous growling, snarling noise far louder than the dogs, far too loud for a dingo, and totally unlike any animal, or other kind of noise we'd ever heard in the bush up to that time; in fact it reminded us of the circus lions we'd heard on many occasions. The night was very dark, we had no firearms, so called out "Who's there?"

"The answer was a terrific roar that fairly shook the ground and sent the dogs scurrying inside the hut [the door was open up to then].In they came helter-skelter straight underneath our bunks. A few moments later something struck the back of the hut a tremendous blow. Meanwhile, I had shut the door whilst my mates secured the two wooden windows, at the same time yelling out to enquire who it might be and what the hell he meant kicking up that bloody row that time of night."

"The answer was an even more savage attack on the walls of our luckily well put together dwelling, accompanied by growls that made our hair fairly stand on end. We stacked the table and a couple of bunks against the door, it being about the weakest part of our defences, then stood back, armed with mattock handles, the best available weapons we had, ready to offer battle to the Unknown which continued to try to batter its way inside."

"Once during a long attack on the rear wall we shifted the barricades away from the door and tried desperately to 'sool' our dogs out to the attack, but although they would like most Australian Cattle Dogs tackle anything, this time they utterly refused and took shelter underneath the other bunk, eyes glaring, every bristle they owned standing on end, and shivering with fright; which showed plainly that this creature was something they knew no more about than we did, which helped convince us our very unwelcome visitor was no human being."

"Several hours passed during which most of the time, the 'Thing' walked round and round our hut, the heavy 'pad, pad, pad' of its feet revealing it to be of very considerable weight; only stopping for short intervals, even then keeping up a low slobbering sound that was horrible to hear, then at it again.

More that once we fully expected to see the walls and roof of our bark hut come crashing down under the rain of blows from some heavy weapon the creature was using; more than once did we bless our foresight in using fairly heavy hardwood timber for the framework."

"About two o'clock 'it' finally gave up and went off still growling, but we understandably enough did not venture out until after sunrise. Only then did we learn something of the actual size of our bad-tempered caller. A few yards away was the weapon 'it' had been using - the trunk of a young and solid Corkwood tree. It was a good fourteen feet [4.6 m] long when measured and eight inches [20.5 cm] across the butt end, and had been SNAPPED off at both ends, and looked as if it had been battered for hours with a hammer.

[Note: Australian Corkwood is renowned for its toughness and tensile strength]

Enormous man-like footprints

"Also, around the hut we found numbers of enormous man-like footprints embedded in the soil." "We stayed home that day to repair our sorely tried dwelling as well as keep a sharp lookout for the enemy, but strange to say, although we continued to camp there for several months, 'it' never again interfered with the hut."

"However, only twice did we ever have any real experience of its presence thereabouts, although several times we found bullock yokes and other gear scattered about, and one evening about a fortnight after the night attack, one of my mates hung some chains across a certain track after unyoking his team, in order to stop them from straying away. A short while after tea [about dusk], he thought he heard them trying to break through so went up to bring them down and turn them away in another direction. About a hundred yards [100 m] from the chain barricade he heard sounds like that Bloody animal."

"Sneaking forward cautiously, to a spot nearby from where he would be able to see the barricade area outlined against the sky, he saw not cattle, but an enormous creature 'like those Bloody big Chimps we saw that time at Sydney Zoo, only bigger'."

"It was pulling the chains apart and hurling them around to the accompaniment of savage snarling and growling that caused the watcher to return at his best downhill speed. Next morning we all went up with our rifles, just in case, but there was no sign of 'it', but what a mess the working gear was in. Some of the iron neck bows had been pulled out almost straight, others twisted almost right around in a circle, yet another warning of what a rough customer it would be to try and capture it alive and unhurt if one so wished, which we certainly didn't."

[Note: the men were using what are known in other countries as Ox Teams to draw the Cedar timber away on large, iron clad slides. Also, in Australia Ox Teams have always been referred to as Bullock Teams.] One afternoon about three months after the hut and other incident, one of the men was pulling some timber up to the top from a short way down on the Paterson side.

"The other blokes were both away on other work so I'd brought young 'Alf' up for company, he was about seven years old at the time and pretty handy about the camp. "I'd stopped the team to give them a spell when all of a sudden, a tremendous and seemingly human voice began roaring and yelling about a quarter of a mile away down where we had come from only a short while earlier. We could hear it quite clearly, in fact so loud was it that for a few minutes I had a bit of a job to calm the team."

"Unlike animal sounds these seemed to be in the nature of connected and definite language utterances though neither Alf or I were able to recognise any actual words. The team by now having become accustomed to the noise, I cracked my whip and we both yelled as loud as we could between the intervals when the voice stopped for a while. We went a short way down to where we could see without being seen from below. Here we waited quite a while but saw nothing, and after about 30 minutes the Thing not having appeared and been silent for a good while we resumed our journey."

"Whatever it was, animal or sub-human, it had a voice far louder than any bullock driver I've ever heard. In truth, if you've ever heard an angry bull working himself into a fury, by lowering his mouth to the ground and roaring his loudest amongst thick standing timber, you'll have some small idea of what I mean." "I've no doubt it was either the same or a similar creature that attacked the hut and bullock gear," the man said.

Sassafras Mountain 1912

Brown haired man-like Beast

About June in the winter of 1978, Sussex Inlet resident Alf Collier was exploring bushland in the mountains of nearby Morton National Park when he found long strands of hair caught in the branch of a shrub on the side of Wandandian Mountain. The hair seemed unlike any normal human hair.

Nearby Alf found young wattle trees with 8 cm thick trunks broken 1 m above the ground, and which had then been torn down the centre, exposing Witchetty Grub holes, obviously done by someone or something to get at the grubs, presumably for food. Above these trees Alf smelt a powerful stench. He had smelt this stench on two other occasions in the same area earlier during April 1978.

Alf's father-in-law, Mr Norm Allsopp, about 1912 saw a brown-haired, man-like beast in scrub at the foot of Sassafras Mountain 30 km west of Sussex Inlet. With him were two large dogs which cowered and ran off terrified at the sight of the hairy manbeast.

Royal national park Sutherland 1913

Manbeast

The following is typical of old settlers tales of the region and was given to this author by Mrs JuneMullans of Kempsey, NSW. Her father, Mr Frank Bran, was born in Royal National Park, Sutherland, in 1900 and lived with his sister Mary and their parents at their residence, [above the causeway on the eastern [ie Sydney side] of the Woronora River], on Lady Carrington Drive [now Lady Gowrie] at Audley.

Frank's father [also named Frank] was the first ranger to be appointed in charge of the park, which then, as now, was a vast region of dense coastal jungle and scrubland, itself an extension of the dense forest and scrub country of the South Coast extending down to, and beyond the Bulli/Wollongong district. Frank and his sister Mary attended nearby Saltwater School, walking to and from the school every day along a lonely bush track, always crossing the river at the causeway.

One afternoon in 1913, when Frank was 13 years old and Mary 11, they were returning from school and were crossing the causeway. As they neared the east bank of the river, they both spotted some distance ahead of them, a strange dark figure standing in scrub at the base of a cliff above the causeway.

I quote Mrs Mullans: "Mary would have been apprehensive, but Dad was not afraid of anything and walked up towards the figure for a better look. He soon realised that it was a big brownish haired, naked male creature, much taller than his 5ft 11 inch [1.8m] height and very thick set". "As Dad approached it, the creature moved forward quickly and grabbed him. Dad escaped after fighting him off, but he was badly scratched as a result of his encounter."

"One afternoon a couple of weeks later, again on their way home from school [and no doubt a bit wary as they approached the causeway], they spotted the creature again. This time he was standing above the cliff at the same spot. Frank and Mary ran home as fast as they could in another direction." "They never saw the strange manbeast again." "Eerie cries - terrible screams - have been heard about the park area in the old days. It was enough to terrify people and discourage them from camping out at night."

"The 'hairy man' that attacked Dad is a well established family story ," says Mrs Mullans. A common warning to misbehaving children of that district lingers on: "The hairy man will get you if you don't watch out." [This author still remembers much the same warning from his mother while still quite young, living on our bush-surrounded farm at Lansvale, outside Cabramatta at the beginning of the 1950's].

Mareeba District 1914

Little native Pgymy

In 1914, farms in the Mareeba district, inland from Cairns were having frequent pygmy raids. On one occasion a very frightened male, loaded with vegetables he had picked nearby, was cornered in a stockyard by a rifle-brandishing farmer, when the little native, had tried to sneak through the farm in the early morning light. After calling to his family to have a good look at the terrified man the farmer let his prisoner escape.


Sumatra 1916

Male Sedapa

The Dutch Administration of that time took the existence of the Sedapa seriously enough to launch an investigation of these hominids. In early July 1916, two hunters spotted a male Sedapa on the slopes of Mt Kaba in the Boekits Range. The black hairy creature was in the act of breaking open a fallen tree in search of beetle larvae. He was a mere 20 yards from the men. Suddenly becoming aware of their presence, he dashed off into the forest, leaving the two men quite stunned.

Whole families of these primitive hominids have been claimed seen in these parts, even with recent years. The height of average Sedapas is aid to be at least 1.5 to 1.8m for the males and 1.2 to 1.5m for the females.


Scrubby Creek District-Tholongolong 1918

Monster Man

According to Mr Paul Graeber of Albury, NSW an old man known as "Browny" once spoke of a "monster-man" which, he said, inhabited a swampy area in rugged mountainous forest country, in the Scrubby Creek district near Tholongolong about 1918. It was during that year that "Old Browny", a rabbit trapper, claimed he saw the "monster-man" while he was exploring the Scrubby Creek bushland.

It was in this Scrubby Creek area that early bushmen in the 1880's and 1890's found large ape-like footprints on numerous occasions. Even 100 years later the "monster-men" of Tholongolong still remain very real to the modern day inhabitants of the region.