Blue Mountains 30 March 2007 POSSIBLE ENCOUNTER

Prior to this trip to the Blue Mountains, we had received reports that a group of high school students had been scared out of their wits at midnight one evening when they were doing as high school students do, and "hanging out" together at a cul-de-sac adjoining the Blue Mountains National Park. We headed up to the area the following weekend and scouted the area.

The photos below show the area of interest. We met with two of the school students who appeared to be quite enthusiastic. We were very aware of the possibility that this may have been a prank. During the evening, we walked some of the local firetrails looking for evidence and seeking a possible encounter. The closest we came was being frightened by the thumping of a wallaby taking off in the sdark beside us. At about 9:30pm, we noticed that the dogs in the valley to the north of us had begun barking furiously. This was the valley where the previous sighting had occurred. We received an sms txt from the school students who had located themselves on the side of the road in the cul-de-sac (the far side from the road!). They reported the dogs and sounds coming from the bush, as well as apparent eye-shine from the bush.

We made our way over the cul-de-sac. On reaching it we found the two boys huddled under a streetlamp on the other side of the road from the bush. As we approached and sat down I distinctly saw the eye-shine from two eyes as they popped up from behing a grassy mound in the bush and disappeared again. As we talked to the boys, they related that this was similar to what they had been seeing for the past 30 minutes. At intervals over the next hour, most of us caught glimpses of eye-shine through the trees, probably 20-30 m away from us. The boys also described their experience from the weekend before, when they had seen a huge manlike (but hairy) creature emerging from a bush trail but stopping short of the road, nearby to another streetlamp. This time around, they had been too frightened to venture onto the bush side of the road. As we sat there listening (sometimes with a parabolic microphone) and watching, we heard various noises from the bush but were unsure of approaching. Oddly, although we had seen the eye-shine to our left when we arrived, the noises were generally coming from our right, near a firetrail that led off behind some local houses.
The area during the day (above). The crushed grass and branches in this area were interesting. In other areas, you can see similar undergrowth, but it is not squashed to the ground as can be seen here.

The eye-shine was seen in the dark area behind the trees in the centre of this photo.

This is a shot of the area we saw the eye-shine at night. Nothing visible in the photo unfortunately but the eye-shine was seen behind the narrow white tree trunk at the right hand side of the photo.

After waiting for two hours or so, with very little further activity except for the noises off to our right, we decided to venture into the bush a little way. We were more than ably assisted by a local resident who has become an investigator for the area over the past years.

We walked down the firetrail to the right a little ways but saw nothing except for a grassy area that had been set up for a wedding reception. When we had returned to the street, we were accosted by an agitated resident. It was his daughter's wedding reception area that was set up for the next day and he thought we might be thieves. Interestingly, when he calmed down and we explained that we were just harmless nutters looking for yowies, he said he had heard us walking about down there "all night". Yet we had only ventured there 5 minutes before he had come out to see us off. So what was down there?

This evening ended positively. Although we could not say for certain that we had seen definite proof of a large cryptic hominid, we had definitely seen and heard something, in one of the hotspot areas in Australia, a week after a strong sighting had been made. We are making progress!