Location: Kiah, New South Wales
Event: Yowie Sighting
Date: December, 1987
Time: 12pm
[Male Witness]
Initial Submission:
December 1987, on the Upper Kiah Road near Eden.
It was a bright sunny summers day around midday, the terrain was hilly thick bush and scrub.
I had planned to meet a friend of mine both on BMX'S. He was riding in from the highway and me from home. I was nearly at the top of the longest hill and I heard a noise on the road. I looked up and saw my mate peddling over the rise with his head down looking at the road.
I thought if ride quietly I’ll be able to scare the hell out of him. I was able to get within 30 metres or so and he still hadn’t seen me and I got ready to yell at the top of my lungs.
Whilst I drew breath to yell, something screamed next to me. The noise was totally outlandish something I have never heard before. Absolutely terrifying. I looked over and standing next to a tree on the bank on the side of the road was something that looked like Chewbacca .
About ten feet tall thick course red /brown hair.
It was standing on a bank on the side of the road. Around 10 feet tall very red hair but the sound it made was more terrifying than the sight of it.
I think I may have surprised it.
It just screamed this god-awful shriek like a giant pig being killed. Not sure what it did after cause I was pedalling hell for leather back down the hill.
The sight of this thing or perhaps it was the sound, seemed to induce an altered state and time distortion. I can’t remember turning around, I just remember peddling as fast as possible back down this hill with my mate next to me.
We didn’t stop until we had got through the swamp and back up the hill to my house. I remember us both remarking to each other "What the hell was that”.
I can’t even remember telling mum or dad about it, I mean what could we really say.
[End]
The Following is the Transcript of the conversation with Paul Cropper:
Witness Ian: When I saw it, I was about 12.
Paul: And it was in December that year?
Witness Ian: Yeah, I remember it being pretty warm so it was either the start or the end of summer.
Paul: Okay, well just take me through your experience.
Witness Ian: We lived on a dirt track about 3km from the main highway and I'd organised to meet a friend of mine on the dirt track, his father was going to drive him off at the highway and he was going to ride the bicycle in the night and leave him on my bike.
We got the call and I took off, started riding about 10, 11 in the morning. Really bright and sunny, beautiful day.
And just riding up quite a steep hill and I heard a noise up ahead and that was him coming up over a rise on his bike but he had his head down so he hadn't seen me yet.
So I thought, ‘I can scare the crap out of him here, this will be really good.'
And so I kept riding quietly as I could and then it got a bit closer, I just got ready to scream out as loud as I could and that's when this thing just screamed its whole face to me.
It was standing on a bank, the bank was about 4ft high off the road and I was only standing about 3 metres away from it and it was leaning up against a tree or the rest of it all had its hand up against a tree and it was just like Chewbacca, it was frickin' enormous.
Like 10ft, 12ft high.
And I can't remember any facial details, in fact from the time it screamed, my only memory is having the bike turned around and me and the mate turtling back down the hill as fast as we'd ever, ever gone down that hill.
And we got back up to the house and sort of said, 'What was that, what was that, don't know?'
And I can't really remember saying anything about it after that.
Paul: Did you tell your parents or?
Witness Ian: Well I can't remember asking them a little while ago, she said she remembers us coming home saying we saw something but didn't really follow anything up.
Paul: You only had it in view for a short period?
Witness Ian: Yeah, only, I don't know, couple of 3, 4, 5 seconds and we were off.
Paul: But you were pretty close to it?
Witness Ian: Yeah, only about 3 metres away.
Paul: This thing was, ok so what's the country like there, I mean we're talking about just paddocks with some trees or what was it like opening the forest?
Witness Ian: It was a thick bush, from where I live basically at Kiah it's just forestry owned land and national park all the way past Victoria down to Mallacoota.
Hundreds of kilometres of just bush. No farms or paddocks or anything like that.
Paul: You're riding along and you hear the sound, can you describe it… You said it was like a shriek or?
Witness Ian: A very loud screech, similar to, I guess cocky when it's screeched except way way louder. Deeper.
I used to kill pigs and they also sound similar when they got killed, but even louder and scarier than a pig getting killed.
Paul: How long did the sound last for?
Witness Ian: So this is a weird thing, when I heard the sound I can remember fairly vividly up until that point and then after the sound there's bits missing like I can't remember actually turning around, all I can remember is having already been turned around and riding.
And the other thing is I can't remember any details in the face and I was thinking, like I used to think, it must have had the sun behind it silhouetted but now that I think of it, it was 11 o'clock in the morning the sun would have been straight up overhead so that it shouldn't have been silhouetted from the position I was standing.
It's almost as if somehow some memory has been wiped from the sound.
But I get the feeling that it made the sound scare us or we scared it and I got the feeling that they make this sound to scare us off or something.
Paul: Do you remember that it was a long long scream or quite short or it just didn't have that sense?
Witness Ian: Very long, long and deep.
In fact I didn't put this on the thing that I sent you but probably about a year after that I got woken up one night, a very clear night by exactly the same sound and I shat myself.
And I could hear it breathing outside the window and we have horses and cows and stuff and I know what they sound like breathing because they're always hanging around and this was way way deeper again and I knew it was just down outside the bedroom and I didn't move in the bed.
And after that I didn't hear or see anything ever again.
Paul: So this thing is you're riding up the hill to the top of the hill where your friend's coming over the top so you can see him?
Witness Ian: Yeah I could see his head and the bike come over and I was hiding because I wanted to scare him. He was probably about 30 metres away at the time when I saw him.
Paul: Then this thing makes a sound and you look to your left?
Witness Ian: I looked, this thing makes a sound, I looked to my right and...
Paul: Oh was up on the right hand side?
Witness Ian: Yeah and there it was and...
Paul: Was it looking at you?
Witness Ian: Yeah I can't remember actually seeing any details in the face like I said it was just facing me and...
Paul: Was facing you though?
Witness Ian: Right there, it was only 3 metres away.
Paul: And you said it was leaning on a tree or was it, I didn't get a sense of what it was doing, was it just standing in the open or?
Witness Ian: It was either, I think it was either standing right next to the tree or it actually had its hand on the tree.
It was not doing anything to it I mean.
Paul: It wasn't moving?
Witness Ian: No just standing still.
Paul: You said this thing was huge?
Witness Ian: Yeah yeah at least the smallest 10 foot probably even taller.
Paul: 10 foot would have been just about twice your size at that age?
Witness Ian: It was absolutely massive.
If you look at any ceiling it would be about the height of a 12 foot ceiling. It was big.
Paul: Was it a thin or thick build?
Witness Ian: Very thick coarse red hair I remember.
That's all I can really remember about how it looked is all the edges of it were just, yeah just matted all over it.
Paul: When you say red do you mean red as in red or red as in some other colour?
Witness Ian: Browny red, sort of like perhaps you know orangutan fur colour.
Orangey red.
Paul: Was it the same colour all over?
Witness Ian: Yeah as far as I could tell.
I could only really remember the outline of it with the sun on its hair.
I can't remember what was in the middle of it, I can't remember seeing what was on the chest or what was on the face.
Paul: It wasn't smooth like a bear it was wild hair?
Witness Ian: No no it was real hairy, nothing like a bear. Thick hair, probably about 6 inches long.
Paul: Was it the same thickness everywhere that you could see?
Witness Ian: Pretty much as far as I could tell including, it didn't seem to have a neck, it seemed to me more like a volcano type of shape from the shoulders to the top of the head.
And the whole lot was just covered in hair yeah.
Paul: Did you see it, was it, I mean your view of it, did you see it from like the ground pretty much up?
Witness Ian: I was on the dirt road and as they cancelled grades of the road every year it gets sort of lower and lower compared to the bank.
The bank was about 4 foot high and it was standing on top of that, so about 2 or 3 foot from the edge.
Paul: Could you see arms and legs?
Witness Ian: I could just see the two arms out the side, I didn't really notice any legs.
Paul: Was it a fat thing or was it a thin thing you know for its height?
It was very tall and very very thick, probably close to a metre and a half across.
Paul: That's pretty wide. Did it taper down at the waist or did it just go straight down?
Witness Ian: Same as me, just goes straight down.
It didn't seem to get any skinnier from that sort of, it was just a big brick of a thing. Very thick, very muscly.
I've never even seen, well I've never seen gorillas that big. It had arms maybe the size of gorillas but this is a lot taller.
Paul: You just saw the outline of the head, you said it didn't seem like it had no neck?
Witness Ian: No not that I could notice only because the hair, maybe the hair was covering it I don't know but it was more of a volcano shape from the top of the head to the shoulders.
The other thing too was standing straight up, it wasn't stooping like a gorilla might or anything like that, it was a full standing up.
Paul: Was its arms down by its side or out?
Witness Ian: Down by its side, if anything it may have had one resting on the tree, its right hand one resting up against the tree.
Paul: If you compared it to something would you say it looked more animal or human?
Witness Ian: Well hard to say. It is hard to say.
I definitely got the feeling from it that it wasn't, I mean I knew it obviously wasn't an animal that I'd ever seen before.
And I've never had this memory thing happen like it did with this which is why I keep coming back to the sound.
I reckon the way it screamed puts you in this other state of mind that you just cannot……….. in fact I reckon it might even make it invisible to some people.
That was the worst thing about it, was the sound, even if I hadn't seen it, if I hadn't made a sound I don't think it would have taken off so quickly.
Paul: Well yeah, I mean you hear a weird sound in the bush, particularly a scream it would put the wind up you.
But you're saying that you felt your reaction was something a lot more than that.
Witness Ian: More than that, this was definitely the most scariest sound I've ever heard in my life.
And there's an aboriginal camp probably another 5 km up the highway in another little section of the bush. I've talked to a lot of the elders, the people there and they all talk about sitting around the camp fire and when they hear the hearing man sound they'd all get inside.
I didn't want to know about it.
Paul: What, do you know the name of that community?
Witness Ian: Just the Kaya Aboriginal Camp it was called.
In Eden I'd say there'd be some elder aboriginals that would know about it. Like I said there's hardly anyone in the whole river that has been there for a long time that hasn't seen it.
Paul: Have you spoken to other people that had experiences directly?
Witness Ian: I used to go out with a girl across the river and her mum said she saw it walking across the other side of the river on the snake track.
She saw it one night coming home and there was another lady, I think she's in Perth now, she had an outdoor dunny in a tree stump and she said it just walked straight past her.
Paul: Is this in Kaya?
Witness Ian: Yeah, yep. And I've also heard of a couple of blokes that went exploring in the Nature Reserve a bit more south than Kaya.
Nadgee Nature Reserve, they said they came down some cliffs getting close to the ocean and they found a massive Aboriginal painting of a hairy man.
But I haven't heard of anyone else that saw it, it was only those people.
Paul: So thinking back, what's your reaction thinking back after all these years to it?
Witness Ian: I feel privileged I guess to have been in something like that.
It's just a weird experience I guess. I tell quite a few people, most people think you're a bit nuts but...
Lots of other people have seen it, and usually corroborate what you've seen by what they say.
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