Location: Yanderra, New South Wales
Event: Yowie Encounter
Date: Jan, 1998
Time: Day
I would like to relay an event that occurred in 1998 at Yanderra, Southern Highlands NSW, when I was 12 years old my brother was 9 years old.
My father owned a property at Yanderra which had an old log cabin and was one of the first buildings in the tiny town.
I was in the bush all the time especially on weekends. My brother and I would ride dirt bikes. My father brought the property when I was 3 years old and my brother a newborn, so we spent years in the same area of the bush.
One day in summer around January 1998 myself and my brother were going down one of our usual bush tracks, walking our push bikes about 200m in bush from the house. I stopped because I could see a body imprint in the grass. I stopped and my brother and said “hey look at this, it looks like somebody has been laying here.”
Sketch by Danny Lund of the grass impression.
It looked like a massive person; I could see the head/neck area coming down to long arms and the back impression in the grass. As it got down to the legs it faded into the grass and the top of the body must have been heavy because the shoulders we’re about 3 & 1/2 foot wide.
As my brother and I were looking at the ground impression I started to smell a bad diarrhea smell. I looked at my brother and said you stink, go to the toilet. The smell became so thick that my brother and I ran down the track.
We ran down the hill and stopped at the bottom. We then heard 5 loud footsteps crashing through the bush from where we just came.
I looked back up the track and the bushes on the left started going side to side. At first I thought was a cow running though and falling over the ground. I was trembling. I could hear it walking, and I’m looking at the bushes thinking what is that? Then CRACK. I heard a large gumtree limb snap.
As soon as it snapped, there was a roar that sounded like a lion.
I could hear a clicking sound, like its tonsils were clicking because of the pressure that was coming out of it. This was so loud I could feel my insides moving. I froze and couldn’t move until it stopped.
The roar lasted about 5 seconds and as soon as it stopped, I saw the snapped gumtree limb go spearing though the top of the tree canopy.
The branches and leaves were still attached. Nobody could throw that far and hard. It was unbelievable.
I turned to scream ‘RUN’ to my brother, but he was already running 30m ahead of me. I ran as fast as I could following my brother. I heard it take 3 big leaps behind me as I was running, and something said “Don’t look back keep going”.
I got to about 100m from my father’s house and my brother was there waiting. He said as soon as it roared, he was out of there.
I can’t explain how loud this thing was. It would have taken an enormous strength to break a gumtree limb that is about 250kg, and throw it 50 meters straight through a bush canopy. It went crashing though the tops of the trees.
We told my father, who was working on the property at the time, and he said “It’s a Lyrebird - they can imitate sound”.
I had no idea what I encountered and never heard of YOWIE’s before. I kept it to myself for years until one day about 15 years ago I heard a recorded of a YOWIE roar on the internet. As soon as I heard it, all the memories came flooding back.
In hindsight, there were a lot of indications of YOWIE’s living in the area. I would be alone sometimes and here whistles and stop, then hear another whistle parallel behind me.
I have since had contact with a few people who also have had encounters in the area.
I would love to hear from anyone else who has had an encounter in the yanderra/ southern highlands area.
Thank you,
Danny Lund
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