Location: Acacia Hills, Northern Territory
Event: Yowie Causing Havoc
Date: July/Aug 1997
Terrain: Farm near heavily wooded rainforest/ Hilly landscape.
The following report is an account of what a lone farmer’s wife was witness to at her property in Acacia Hills. Katrina Tucker, who at the time of the interview was 40 years of age, has lived with her husband in the Territory for about 20 years and for the last 9 of those years have resided at their farm in Acacia. The sighting took place during the wet season of July/ August 1998.
In Katrina’s words this is the lead up to the main event:
I was being woken at roughly 2am, by a noise that sounded like a strange howling animal call. It was coming from the direction of the river, which as the crow flies, is about 5km away.
To get to the river you have to go around a ridge, which makes it much further to travel to. I was interested enough to go out on the veranda and listen more carefully. It was not the call of any dingo, dog, bird or crocodile that I’m used to hearing, but something much different. On hearing the call, you could hear a faint answer from another in the distance. This went on for a good 4 – 5 years, in the dry season only.
I had some friends from Katherine stay over and asked them to keep an ear out for the noise. They also heard it and even suggested that I tape it but, with all the other noise of crickets and frogs in the foreground you wouldn’t be able to get a clear taping of the call, it’s very distant.
There are around 30 families living in the area, and none of the neighbours have heard anything, although most have their air-conditioners and fans running which would make it hard to hear any noises outside.
Two days before my encounter, my guard dogs were going off, barking and carrying on. Something had spooked the neighbour’s horses. They were so scared they had jumped the fence and taken off. They were trying to break into the large shade house that I have at the other end of my block.
The shade house is a structure to house plants and trees, it’s very large, the size of a house. In there I grow fruit trees and vegetables and also keep troughs of water for the birds to drink out of. I jumped on the 4 wheeler and took off to see what these hoses were up to. As soon as I arrived, they bolted.
The next morning I went back to check the damage, they had trampled a few Paw Paws into the ground the other side of the fence, so I decided to go and see the neighbour and told him his horses had got out and he said that something had scared them and he didn’t know what it was and it had never happened before.
Night 2 there were cattle, which belonged to a farmer down the road, that were trying to break in to the property and my dogs were going right off. Something had scared the cattle and they had jumped the fence they were being kept in.
Night 3 I was awoken by the dogs. They were hysterical. They are vicious guard dogs, and they were crying and hiding in their kennels frightened out of their minds, like something was really wrong, and I thought, “What is wrong with these stupid dogs?”. Then I heard the call, the same call as I’d been hearing from the river, but allot louder and closer this time!
It sounded like a distressed animal caught in the K wire fence that runs around our property .I thought that from the night before with the cows trying to break in and presumed it was just that. I took the four wheeler up to the shade house AGAIN, at 3am, and by this time I was getting quite angry as this was the third night in a row I’d had to deal with animals breaking into our property.
When I was coming towards where the screaming was going on, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. For an instant, I thought there was a bear caught in the fence! I came up along the fence line and when the head lights first hit this thing I thought I was looking at a bear.
As I came close upon it, it was making this noise and was bent over and crushing the fence down onto the ground. It wasn’t caught in the fence, but rather screaming and carrying on about something, I don’t know what, and crushing the fence down at the same time.
This thing stood 7ft, with light red/brown shaggy hair and heavily built. It had no neck or shoulders just a slope down from where the neck should be. It’s coat was long and matted looking about the length of your hand.
When I saw this thing I just screamed and sharply turned the 4 wheeler around to go back the way I came, the animal started to move in the other direction, up the hill, and by the time I could turn the bike around I was only 3 metres away from this thing and the smell nearly made me dry reach even though I was screaming.
It smelled like when you walk into a bat cave or battery hen facility, very ammonia like stench. It was moving with large swaying paces, stooped over with knees slightly bent as it ran, much like an orang-utan moves. I was screaming all the way home!!! I finally made it back to the house to find my cowardly dogs, which were off the chain, hiding in their kennels howling and crying.
They are vicious guard dogs that would normally run straight out to tackle something, but chose to stay in the kennels. I was so scared I road the bike right up to the stairs, I ran inside locked the door, shut all the windows, and rang my husband who was away at the time.
He told me that it was probably just someone playing a trick on me and to load the gun and fire a shot off the veranda into the air and it would scare off anyone who was around. I ran into the bedroom, loaded the gun, locked the door and stayed inside! I wasn’t going out there! A sleepless night? Yes indeed.
The next day, I went straight back up there at daylight. I found an absolute mess. It had broken down these big Paw Paw trees and stomped them into the ground. The fence was crushed and there were footprints everywhere around where the animal had gone the night before for about 50 metres.
The prints were sunk into the ground which tells me that it was quite a heavy build, and the movie character I would most relate it to is Chewbacca from Star Wars.
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