Database: Sightings & Evidence 1900-1909

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Candelo 1900

5ft tall-young looking-brownish haired-small breasted ape-woman

In an earlier incident, that took place in mountain country in nearby Candelo in 1900, a prospector, Mr. Michael Cunningham, claimed his camp had been visited by a '5ft tall (1.5 m) young-looking, brownish haired, small breasted ape-woman', as he later informed townsfolk. He had been seated at his campfire having lunch and had just made a damper, when this creature appeared a few yards away among the bushes.

She looked inquisitive and Mr. Cunningham motioned her to come forward, but she just stood where she was. He then picked up the damper and threw her a large piece, which landed at her feet. She bent down, picked it up and put it to her mouth and began chewing some of it. Then, still holding onto the remaining damper, she bolted off into the bush.....

Bexley Districts 1900's

Some old identities living in the Bexley district of Sydney still talk of 'hairy beast' that once terrorised the inhabitants of that area in the early 1900' At that time the densely populated area bordering the Royal National Park, Sutherland was covered in thick scrubland.

So terrified were the people thereabouts that they shuttered up thier doors and windows at night to prevent the creature from entering thier homes. The creature (or creatures?), which was said to often cometo the windows and peer inquisitively in, was very real to them......

Wagonga Inlet 1900

Large hairy man Footprints

The discovery of large "hairy man" footprints on the shoreline of Wagonga Inlet, inland from Narooma caused a stir among the locals around 1900. Some people claimed they had been made by a 7ft [2.14m] tall, hairy female 'Doolegard'. However, such discoveries of foot, hand and knee impressions, left by crouching, drinking hominids of large size had been [and still are] found on remote coastal and inland mountain creeks since the first years of settlement hereabouts.

Bundanoon/Kangaroo Valley Area 1900

Hairy Boy

Claims of sightings of Yowies by property owners and others have persisted for the past 70 years in the Bundanoon/Kangaroo Valley area, and around 1900 the district was alive with reports of a "hairy boy" roaming the bushland. Even today these areas are still the scene of Yowie sightings.

Johnson's Hole Area 1900

Large Baboon-like man

Miss M Hodge of Bathurst related an experience of her own to this author in December 1979 which concerned the Johnson's Hole area. When a little girl in 1900, Miss Hodge lived on her parent's property, which stood opposite the 'Hole'. Aborigines thereabouts never swam in the Hole and even today horses and dogs also will not remain near the Hole at night.

Miss Hodge said she once saw a horseman who had been mustering sheep, ride all the way out of the hills "white as a sheet". He told her parents that he had seen a large 'baboon-like' man, a giant which had terrorised him. Miss Hodge herself saw a man-sized black-haired Yowie, sitting under a rock near her home one day. Old timers often discussed the possibility that the creatures might inhabit caves that lie in the hill surrounding the Hill End township.

Kerry Valley Beaudesert 1900

Attacks by these Monsters

Back in the 1900's an old Aboriginal 'Big Johnny', who roamed around the Kerry Valley-Beaudesert country to the north-west of the Lamington Plateau, told locals that his ancestors had lived in terror of the Wolumbin Giants; big muscular beings who would often attack Aboriginal camps wielding their huge wooden or stone clubs and hand-axes.

Also known as the Goommund tallanbana, "The Giant men who tower over the trees", 'Big Johnny' would tell stories of attacks by as many as several of these monsters, in which they would also heave huge rocks at the terrified natives, killing and carrying off their victims to feed upon them in their mountain lairs.

Whenever asked how tall the Wolumbin Giants were, 'Big Johnny' would indicate twice the height of a local Irish publican who was a good 1.8m tall!


Yowaka River 1902

Attacks by these Monsters

Just south of Bega, on the coast lies Pambula. From here the Yowaka River flows inland. It is along this river that “hairy people” have been getting themselves seen and have been in the news since the 1870s.

It is a haunt also of Rexbeast giants, and in 1902 a property owner watched helplessly, as an “11 foot tall man-giant”, as he called it, carried off into scrub a calf that he had just broken the neck of.

Carrabolla 1903

Hairy Giants

Throughout the East Gresford district, which lies about 41 km north-west of Maitland, locals still talk of the "hairy giants of Carrabolla" that instilled a reign of terror in the old days in the farming communities that lay around the base of the high, steep mountain terrain, which is a feature of the area. Earlier in the 20th century dense forest covered the mountains, but this is now largely gone and the area is more open for access.

The "hairy giants" were described as large, man-ape creatures by the early pioneers, who told stories of encounters with these often taller-than normal human creatures, or having stumbled upon their enormous footprints in the bush.

One evening in 1933, Mr. E. L. Bates was yarning with an old mate who lived in the Carrabolla area and learnt of an experience that his friend 'Dave' had with one of these 'manimals' back in 1903. "I was fencing out at Carrabolla along the top of a ridge. It had been cleared along the top but was still covered with the original forest along both sides. About four o'clock this particular evening I got a queer feeling something or somebody was watching me, and when I looked behind me I nearly dropped the shovel I was using.

About thirty yards away just inside the timber, was what I still believe to have been a young monkey; its head, arms and shoulders showing above the bushes in front of it." "The light was real good and I'm positive it wasn't a young Paddymelon, Wallaby or any other animal believed to be in a wild state in Australia. It looked at me in a bewildering sort of way for three or four minutes or so, then it ducked down. I hurried to where it had been , but there was no sign of it."

"I waited for ten minutes or so hoping it would perhaps reappear in the open, but neither did I see, nor hear anything unusual again during the remaining several weeks that I was working on the job."

Maitland Station Torrington 1903

Hairy Giants

"Local Aborigines claim that a Mr Billy Carter of Maitland Station at Torrington, back in 1903, saw a larger-than-man-sized, man-like hairy beast while on horseback in dense bushland near his home."

Coromandel 1903

Larger than man-sized Footprints

In 1903 larger-than-man-sized footprints were found by miners in the Karangahake gorge district of the Coromandel range. The five-toed tracks embedded in mud on a creek bank, suggested the maker was a good 2.4-2.7m tall and of tremendous weight and strength.


WF [Bill] 1904-1996 Gilroy

Experienced Bushman

This book is also affectionately dedicated to my late father WF [Bill] Gilroy [1904-1996]

An experienced bushman and gold miner. Although the big gold strike always eluded him, he unearthed the Tarana Skull No 1 [Solo Man], a 300,000 year old mineralised fossil, the discovery of which is pertinent to this book, for it demonstrates that the first modern humans evolved in Australia.

Mr Bates-research into the Yowies 1905

Yowie Stories

This author is indebted to researcher Mr E.L. Bates, for the great wealth of material gathered by him, and which he so generously provided me with, when I first began preparations for this book during the late 1970's. It is this material which now makes up much of this chapter.

The region covered by his investigations has remained virtually unchanged since pioneering days; rugged, forest-covered hills and mountains, rising up out of the forests of the Hunter Valley and New England Ranges, making up a vast expanse of often impenetrable wilderness.

Vast expanses into which few white men [if any] have ever penetrated. It is from these wilderness regions that, today hairy manbeasts [and womanbeasts!] are claimed to emerge, to wander onto the edge of lonely farms, leaving their sometimes huge footprints in the mud of waterholes as 'calling cards', before retreating back into their wilderness habitat, high amid those cloudline peaks. Mr. Bates, first heard of the Yowies about 1905, while a child growing up at Caroda, which lies between Narrabri and Bingara.

Bullaburra 1905

5 ft tall hairy ape-like Creature

It was in a deep forested fern-covered gully east of Bullaburra one day in 1905, that a Sydney botanist, Mr C. E. Peel, was exploring for specimens, when he caught sight of a 5 ft tall, hairy, ape-like female creature grubbing for roots on the forest floor. Mr Peel kept quiet, hidden among ferns watching her every move. He watched as she fed upon young plant shoots and roots, then she moved on, clambering over rocks. He followed her at a safe distance as the strange female moved on two legs deeper into the forest. However, she moved too fast for him and he soon lost sight of her.

Kurrajong Heights 1906

Six small black Men

It was about 1906 that two timber cutters working deep in the Kurrajong Heights scrub came face to face on a lonely timber jinkers track, with a group of six small black men carrying spears.

They were also carrying two wallabies they had killed. Both parties stared at one another for a brief moment, before the group of wild black men moved away into the scrub, chattering among themselves.

Roaring 'Whaar Whaar' 1907

Large Footprints

Over 50 years ago, Mr Albert James Underhill, an experienced bushman and drover was camped in the vicinity of the Ruined Castle, south of Katoomba. As he sat by his campfire prior to sleeping, a large dark shape emerged from the nearby bush. All that Mr Underhill could see in the dim light was what appeared to be a tall man-like shape at least 2.3 m in height. The figure made a loud grunting noise and emerged back into the darkness.

Mr Underhill was no stranger to the Yowie. In 1907 as a young sheep shearer, he was camped on the Bukalong River, near Wee Jasper, in the NSW (New South Wales) Southern Highlands with a group of other shearers. He decided not to pitch his tent near the other men and picked out a grassy spot near a cockatoo fence, some distance away. He pitched his tent with the back to fence, and after the evening meal retired to his bunk to read by the light of a candle.

Around midnight he was disturbed by what he thought, was a bullock with something in its throat (as he later described it), it made a grunting, coughing noise. He also thought it to be a heavy beast, judging from the sounds of the twigs crackling beneath its feet. It was coming from the bush on the other side of the cockatoo fence, at the head of his bead. As he listened it came nearer, then all was quiet for a while, no doubt while the beast checked the tent.

Then from right beneath tent it roared, "Whaar!, Whaar!." With that Mr Underhill bounded out of his tent, grabbing a spare tent pole, and wheeling it around over his head, yelled for all his worth. The beast ran off in the direction from which it had come, still making its strange call from time to time, until it faded in the distance. Of course the other men heard the sounds also, but none had any answer as to what it could have been.....

Sussex Inlet 1907

Overpowering Smell

About 1907 a 15 year old boy, Fred Ball of Sussex Inlet saw a'Doolagarl' in the bush on a rocky crest in full view of him. It moved off into thick scrub, leaving an "overpowering smell".

This smell, sometimes associated with the Yowie, will figure later in many sightings reports. But then, these hairy primitives do not necessarily wash themselves as normal, modern humans normally do!.....


Mammoth Mountain Bega 1909

Two metre tall hairy Man

Leaving the Snowy Mountains region for the far south coastal and inland districts, we find another area rich in 'hairy man' folklore. About 1909, a Mr. Charles saw a two-metre-tall hairy man in bushland oh his remote farm near the base of Mammoth Mountain outside Bega. The man-beast was observing him as he went about his work cutting timber. When he stopped to observe the hairy visitor it turned and walked off back into the scrub.

Narooma 1909

Large animal-black-haired Orangutan

Up the coast from Bega is Narooma, where early settler's tales are still recalled by residents; such as the story of Mr George H Warren, who as a young schoolboy about 1909, was swimming in a waterhole one day with other youths below the "Ben Paddock" near Nerrigundah.

All of a sudden the boys heard a terrific roaring sound coming from the nearby scrub. Looking in the direction of the sound, they saw a large animal;, black-haired and similar looking to an Orangutan, in the act of tearing back the scrub with powerful arms and emitting roaring sounds at them. The youths quickly gathered up their belongings and ran from the waterhole in great terror. Once again, we see in this description a Gigantopithecine, rather than more human creature.

Mammoth Mountain 1909

2 metre tall hairy man

About 1909 a Mr Charles, while cutting timber on his remote farm near the base of Mammoth Mountain outside Bega,. saw a 2 metre tall "hairy man" observing him as he went about his task, but when he stopped the hairy visitor turned and walked off back into the scrub.