YOWIE FOOTPRINTS & CASTS

Footprints are some of the most difficult evidence to find, yet often the most convincing to the skeptic. Why is this so? Foliage damage, tree bites and eyewitness reports are much harder to "rationalise" as other phenomena, so why the interest in footprints? Perhaps it is the undeniable sensation that footprints imbue with their presence, perhaps also the morphological character that can be gleaned from them.
The photograph above shows a print found in sandy soil, with Jerry's foot as scale. The flat, triangular shape is intriguing, and the toes are visible.

The print in the photo below is more difficult to discern. This is one of the unfortunate side-effects of photography, as the print was quite clear on observation. 3 toeprints were visible, the length of the print was 360 mm, with a width of 150 mm across the toes. Distance between strides was approximately 1.3 metres. The prints were found in mossy grass alongside Jerry and Sue's house in May 2001.
The photograph below shows a cast made from a very clear set of footprints found in a newly created and graded gravel driveway, in another eyewitness' backyard on the other side of the highway from Jerry's house. The shape of the forefoot appears very odd, with a very reduced heel. However, the heel in the cast is smaller than in the actual footprint, due to cave-in of the gravel prior to casting.



Notes on the footprints
Some features of these footprints are interestingly similar to those examined by Dr. Jeff Meldrum of the Idaho State University, USA. (http://www.isu.edu/~meldd/fxnlmorph.html). The first is the great expanse of flat foot, particularly in the forefoot, and the second is the presence in the photograph immediately above of a midfoot pressure ridge. This print look similar also to the footprint photographed by Robert Laverty in 1967 near the location of the famous Patterson-Gimlin bigfoot footage in Northern California (the photo below - credit Lyle Laverty).