Location: Redbank Plains, Queensland
Event: Chased by a large creature in the bush
Date: 1986
Time: Night
Hi Dean,
It was sometime in 1986. I was around 18 years old and my friend Simon was about 16. The weather was not cold at night, though not hot like Ipswich summers are so it may have been late summer/ early spring, or early summer. I just remember it wasn’t a hot humid night, but not a bitter cold night either. There was no chill in the air.
My friend Simon and I had been out riding our pushbikes for the night, riding around the Redbank Plains area. We were bored and we’d decided to go for a ride on our 10 speed racer type bikes. I can’t remember if we visited friends out there or not because the later incident has tended to cloud that part of my memory, but I do know that we spent quite a few hours in the area exploring. It was an area we’d ridden to on other occasions.
It was about 1am, and after hours of riding around we decided it was time to go home. We started riding home along Redbank Plains Road which runs between Redbank Plains and Blackstone in Ipswich, crossing the Cunningham Hwy. I’m pretty sure there were no houses along here between School Road and Greenwood Village Road, but I’m pretty sure there was a sports field which is still there on the western side of the road, and I think there may have been a depot where one still sits today, though I can’t be sure. I think there was an old run down house up near the edge of the bush on the northern side of the road.
We had just started coming up the steeper part of the road and, feeling pretty exhausted from the nights ride, we both hopped off to walk the bikes up the hill. This part of the road coincides with where the bush on the side of the road starts. We had only been walking a short while, maybe 2 minutes when we heard the footsteps of something walking through the bush parallel to the road. It sounded bipedal and our first thought was some sort of psycho was stalking us. It sounded heavy as each footstep had a definite thud to it. We both looked at each other and I said to Simon, “What the f*ck is that?”. Simon replied, “I think someone’s following us”. I looked into the bushes and couldn’t see anything, than I said to Simon, “Let’s get the f*ck outta here”. By the time I’d finished that statement, both Simon and I were on our bikes peddling as hard as we could up the hill. As Simon put it, we ‘turned into instant athletes’.
As we rode up the hill, we could hear the stalker (whether Yowie or person we can’t be sure) running through the bush beside us and this gave us a tremendous adrenalin rush. I remember thinking that it didn’t sound as if it were running that fast, but it seemed to keep up with us, and we weren’t cruising up that hill. By the time we reached the top of the hill, near the intersection of Redbank Plains Road and Greenwood Village Road, we stopped and I almost fell off my bike. I was totally exhausted and unable to speak. There may have been a street light there which illuminated the intersection. I’m unsure.
When I was able to speak, I think we could still hear something in the bushes, but we soon got back on our bikes and sped down the next hill and half way up the next. At this point, we passed a house which sat alone at the time, but now has a large shed and concrete parking lot next to it. I think they may be the same owners still. As the creature would have had to cross the road into the other bushland, or go around behind the house to evade detection, I think it stopped because when we got further up the hill, we couldn’t hear anything. Also, the bushland starts to thin out around this point and is almost non-existent close to the highway.
When the road started to flatten out a little, we hopped back on our bikes again and rode until we reached the Ipswich side of the Cunningham Highway, then slowed down and rode at a leisurely pace. Both Simon and I were totally in agreement to every aspect as I remembered it, and even today when we speak of it, we still remember it clearly.
The bushland to on either side of this road is still thick enough in places to hide someone or something at night, but some of the bush to the south has been taken away with housing and open cut mining. Back then, the bushland corridor would have extended to Beaudesert, Boonah and Ripley. I don’t know who or what it was that night, but it sure scared the hell out of us. We never actually saw anything or heard any vocalisations, but since I’d always assumed it was a human, I could never work out why someone would do what they did. The Yowie theory, believe it or not sounds more plausible.
Paul - Ipswich
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