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!

March 4 2007 Expedition - Blue Mountains

Location: Lower Blue Mountains, NSW

Number of participants: 3

Preface: We headed to a particularly active area of the the Blue Mountains for a two night expedition from the 2nd to 4th March 2007.

We camped out at the end of a road leading to a firetrail in an historically active area. During the first day, T and A went looking around the local area and met up with a few local residents with their own experiences.

On Sat 3rd, Mike (me) joined the expedition. I parked at the end of the road where it stops and becomes a firetrail. I then walked a few hundred metres or so down the track to a saddle leading into a steep gully on the northern side. Here, approx 10 metres from the firetrail I found an interestingly disturbed group of sapling and low bushes that appeared to me to have been pushed down into the centre.

Watagans Expedition, August 2005 - Stick arrangements and other vegetation disturbance

Location: Watagans National Park, NSW

Number of participants: 2

Following the previous trips into the Watagans, confidence had been gained in this remote area and we felt more comfortable venturing away from the vehicle and the established firetrails.

On this trip, we took the car further down into the bush from the site we had originally investigated, along a steep and rocky 4WD track. On reaching a flatter section with an embankment on the left and a steep forested gully on the right, I noticed a broken tree and an area where something have disturbed the earth climbing up the embankment. I think it's worth mentioning at this point that the area we were visiting is deep in the bush and it is pretty unlikely that any people have been there for a long period of time. Certainly the track I was driving on had no tracks from previous vehicles, so we can discount any vehicle entry for the few weeks prior to my time there.

Looking uphill from the disturbed area was open forest and nothing much to see. So we got out of the car and headed down the hill from where whatever it was that made this disturbance came from, or was going. Approximately 20 to 30 metres into the bush my partner discovered to her surprise, a large fallen log with pushed-down grass on the uphill side. Very odd was a collection of eucalyptus leaves and twigs that had been gathered from somewhere and placed around the log, and the number of long sticks that had been placed roughly parallel along the length of the log (see photo)

Whilst being reasonably skeptical of some very detailed reports we had from some other researchers in this area, we had to admit that this "sign" was very interesting. Again, despite spending some hours in the area, no other activity was seen (sightings, vocalisations).

Watagans Expedition November 2003 - bizarre stick arrangements

In late 2003 a number of daytime expeditions were made to an area reputed to have been the location of a number of yowie sightings. The area is a half an hour drive along dirt track through a hilly plateau. The location of these photographs is found on a firetrail that diverges from the main dirt road, about 200 m from the road.

Located in an area where reported sightings have occurred, these bizarre placed stick arrangements have been found. These two arrangements are some of many in the immediate vicinity. We postulate they may be territorial markings or perhaps trail markers. They do not appear to be coincidentally fallen, and on occasions it is possible to see where certain branches have been wrenched and placed into location.

October 2003 - Blue Mountains

Location: Lower Blue Mountains, NSW

Date: October 6, 2003

A day trip to a few areas in the lower Blue Mountains reported to be hotspots. This was also a good opportunity to see how the area had regrown following the terrible bushfires of the previous year. One of these areas has had a history of yowie activity for many years, with one particular encounter in the past decade bringing a number of residents out into the street together.
On this occasion however, the results were rather disappointing. One or two broken trees were found but no other particularly interesting sign. A trail through the grass was found in one location but as this area is quite close to a walking track it was probably caused by humans.

An area rumoured to be a yowie activity area was also investigated (below). Although this was a beautiful spot, the usual signs of broken saplings or those very obvious crushed grass trails through the bush were not seen. It was decided to come back later for a night trip to see if the rumours of the spot could be substantiated.

Blue Mountains Expedition January 2002

Shortly after the devastating bushfires in the Blue Mountains in January 2002, a short expedition was made by D and M. The area has had plenty of sighting and other activity over the years. Many residents of the streets backing onto the bush in this area have very interesting stories to tell (for further accounts or people's experiences in this area, buy Paul Cropper and Tony Healy's fabulous book "The Yowie").

While no activity was seen during this visit, a very unusual print was discovered (cigarette packet for scale).

1979 Encounter, Yarrangobilly/Talbingo region, Southern NSW

Location: The vast uninhabited wilderness in the Kosciusko National Park. The location was a creek flat beside a powerline access road which comes off the Snowy Mountains Highway a few kilometres north-west of the locality of Yarrongobilly.
Date: Easter 1979

A large group of people were camping on a rise beside a large open creek flat as part of a primary school Christian camping trip. We had been up that night sitting beside the campfire, listening to the dingoes howling as they came down from the surrounding bush to the creek flat, probably to drink. It was very very cold and we were quite a distance from any amenities.


Very late one night, we were awoken by some very loud, distressed sounds emanating from nearby. Initially we thought that it was a distress call and that someone was in trouble and needed help. It was as if someone was calling out at the top of their lungs. Then we realised that the calls weren't words that we could understand. It sounded as if someone was saying something but it was garbled or gibberish. Then it occurred to us how loud it was. It struck us that if someone was in great distress, why would they be bellowing out for help in the black of night? And why would they be kilometres away from even the meagre trail that we were camped beside, and many kilometres from the main highway, which is really only a back country road and would probably only see a handful of cars in the wee hours of the night. Who was this and why were they there?

After listening for a time to this screaming and bellowing, we became terrified. The noise was very loud and it was just plain wrong to hear this sort of thing deep in the bush in the middle of the night. We estimated that the caller was probably a kilometre or so away. We sat motionless. Then the calls came closer and louder. Then after a few minutes, after getting closer, the calls stopped. This of course did nothing to make us feel any better, because we thought of course that as it had approached ou campsite, it had seen us and gone quiet, to approach more stealthily. Although we stayed awake for some time after things went silent, we heard nothing else and eventually went back to sleep.
We spent some time in the morning discussing what it could have been. Perhaps a madman out in the bush, who was cranky that we were camped near his home? This seemed pretty unlikely. In addition to this was the fact that it sounded louder than human. We realised that all this was highly improbable, coupled with the fact that the voice wasn't actually saying anything coherent. It wasn't until after some discussion that we considered the possibility that it could have been a yowie.

The Talbingo area has had a number of yowie reports from the late 1800's. Sightings have been reported quite close to the township of Talbingo in the 1990's.

I have since revisited this place (Easter 1995 and December 2003) and did not hear anything. I noted a possible footprint in a creek crossing in 2003. Making more accurate observations on the second visit, the sound appeared to come from west of Michelago Peak. In all directions from Michelago Peak, it is very rough, bush covered terrain with very few tracks at all. It is totally uninhabited by humans.