Location: Brindabellas Ranges near CanberraAim: to investigate the area surrounding the location of the purported yowie footage of Steve Piper.
The area of the alleged footage of a yowie by Steve Piper is located close to the Cotter Dam outside of Canberra. It is a beautiful area and well known for it's yowie stories over the years. The place of the footage had grown over significantly with blackberry bush by the time I visited. It is dense bush on an out-of-the-way bush road. It is not easily negotiated on foot. It is also within 50 km of the area where I heard some ungodly wailing noises in the bush near Yarrangobilly / Talbingo in 1979. Hence my curiosity to visit the area.
The site of the footage is definitely very attractive - dense bush, lots of wilderness and no people. However, it is curious how the footage has completely diappeared and that the footage that did exist is very short and extremely inconclusive. There are some great inconsistencies in the footage. For example - why were only a few seconds shot when the creature was evidently walking away from the camera? Why did the footage stop when the shape went behind a tree? Anybody in that position would have filmed for as long as possible.
There was a story out around the time of the footage that it was a group of Uni students playing a prank on Mr Piper. However, their story does not match with the area. They claimed to have driven to the next hill then crossed by foot with a gorilla suit, to lie in waiting for Mr Piper to stop in precisely the right place to get footage. None of this is possible since there is no nearby location (the 'next hill') where one can park a car and walk to site of the footage. In addition, the terrain is almost impassible. They would also have to have had a million to one chance that Mr Piper would stop exactly where they wanted. The spot is a completely random spot on one stretch of road.
Of course, the whole thing could have been staged and not a trick ON Mr Piper but BY Mr Piper. This seems to be more likely. If anyone has better information, please email and tell me otherwise. If I have haplessly offended an innocent person, I apologise, but one must approach these things with extreme sceptisicm.
I camped the night down a valley within 1 km of Piper's spot, just off a trail from the main road that led down to a creek and arboretum. During the night, my tent was approached by something, but it sounded like a wombat. At about 1am, a group of 4WD "yahoos" drove past and proceeded to burn around the bush tracks for a few hours. I felt far more threatened by them than by "hairy, putrid-smelling ape-like man-like monsters from the bush"......(to paraphrase another famous yowie investigator.)
i have a friend who camped at the cotter dam near the mouth of the river with a couple of friends who got terrorised and chased back to the cotter pub area as what he explained o be like a demon and extremely fast! He said it came out sreaming at them when it started o get dark! true story! Dannos
ReplyDeletei have a friend who camped at the cotter dam near the mouth of the river with a couple of friends who got terrorised and chased back to the cotter pub area as what he explained o be like a demon and extremely fast! He said it came out sreaming at them when it started o get dark! true story! Dannos
ReplyDeleteA friend told me a story about how him and two of his friends went to the cotter dam for a spot of illegal fishing. It took them quite a while to get to a suitable spot where they were sure they would not get busted by rangers and fished into the evening/night. One of the fellows(who they claim had a reputation for tall stories) claimed he heard something in the bush circling around the area they were at. He was told to stop telling lies but persisted with his claims and became quite upset that he was not believed. Eventually they listened and indeed something was there and it was getting closer and closer-branches breaking, trees moving. The lads(who were 15-16 at the time) freaked out, packed their rods and started heading for the cotter dam wall, it took them half the time to get back to the wall than what it took earlier in the day -whatever it was followed them at a distance(grunting, breaking branches), when they were at the base of the cotterdam wall they heard it coming down the wall on the same track they took to get up(on the left of the old dam wall)-at this stage they were sprinting back to the cotter pub area(it was about 3am)-whatever it was crossed the river three or four times(they heard splashing a number of times and foliage on the other side of the river being disturbed). Eventually they reached the cotter pub(no longer there-burnt 2003) banging on the door/windows-yelling, then my friend had said "it moved so fast it was like a cartoon character-it just ran in front of us near the pub, stopped in the middle of the road and did a strange apelike sway and ran around the back of the pub and then under the bridge next to the pub where it sat and was making strange grunting noises-we were in tears-it looked like a five foot tall chimpanzee, (the tears in my eyes prevented me from getting a better look at details etc) but moved so fast-three of us piled into the phone box across from the pub and rang Mum, still crying and hysterical, and we could still hear it under the bridge when mum came to pick us up." My friend was very apprehensive about going back to the area ever again and years later i went with him and another fellow to the back of the dam(illegal fishing)-except this time i myself heard three distinct growls what sounded like a panther/tiger/puma-both other fellows heard the sound as well and i have never seen anyone pack up his gear so fast as the fellow who had the original yowie encounter-he headed back to the 4wd white as a ghost holding his fishing knife in front of him and commented"this is how that night years ago started but this one sounds like a bloody panther-i'm not coming back here again at night-stuff the trout"
ReplyDeletehave a friend who camped at the cotter dam near the mouth of the river with a couple of friends who got terrorised and chased back to the cotter pub area as what he explained o be like a demon and extremely fast! He said it came out sreaming at them when it started o get dark! true story! Dannos
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