Location: Lamington National Park
Event: Encounter.
Date: 2004
Male witness
I’m ex-ARMY, done a lot of bush, a lot on my own. I’m the sort of person who’ll go up a river, follow the creek and off the beaten track on my own. I don’t really have any fear of snakes or anything, I’m very careful when I go bushwalking.
It was down closer to O’Reilly’s; it was between about 2 and 4pm. I was really just looking for a fire track, and I found a really nice fire break track off the road so it’s like a major road then it goes into like a secondary road that only the locals use.
So I went for my little walk, very happy, nice, beautiful day, sunny day. I’ll stop and look at anything that takes my interest, see what’s around, birds, plants, animals. If I hear any noises in the bush, I’ll just freeze hoping it’s an echidna or something because they’re pretty rare.
I got to the end of the fire break; I was really quite oblivious to my surroundings in the sense of not feeling anything unusual until I got to the bottom. On one side was a little bit of scrub, on the other side was the really thick, full-on stuff which I would only have gone in if I was confident I knew I could get out of because that stuff’s really dangerous.
When I got down to the bottom I could smell the really funny smell, which I’d not particularly smelt before, but it smelt like human faeces, but a really strong funny smell. The closest thing I can describe it to is a sulphury, feacey smell. Considering I was in a fire break, it was a really strong smell. That’s the first thing that caught my attention when I walked down but I just ignored it. I have a very good sense of smell; I’ve never smelt that smell before ever in the bush.
This bit will sound very strange, I’ve only experienced this probably twice in my life. Everything went very quiet, unusually quiet for the Australian bush, because things can get pretty noisy.
I thought that’s a bit odd, it’s suddenly got quiet. And I had that funny feeling that everyone talks about, that feeling like something was watching you which I shook off and just ignored it.
When I got to the bottom, I started getting a funny feeling in my stomach, it felt like the wind was a little bit… whispery.
Then I heard a noise to the right of me.
I’ve been in the bush a lot and I know the sound a kangaroo makes. A kangaroo has a very distinctive hop, the fact that they hop is really obvious. This wasn’t hopping, this was thumping, and really bloody heavy thumping to the point where…and I’m not going to say the ground was vibrating, but whatever it was it was heavy. It was very heavy, and it was big, long strides. I’m 6 ft 2, I take a long stride, but I sure as hell don’t make that much thumping on the ground through the bush, and I’ve gone through lots of virgin scrub. Whatever this was, it was just very heavy striding. And I’ve thought ‘what the hell is that?’.
My stomach started getting a bit funny and I went okay…and I got the tingle up my spine, and I went whatever that is, that’s nothing I’ve ever heard or seen before. That sound is a new sound, and because I’ve never heard that sound before, and it’s in the scrub, I started getting a bit scared, even though I know there’s nothing meant to be in our bush that can really get you other than the snakes.
I started walking straight up to the scrub, I was going to go and look for whatever it was. I actually thought it was a person, who was watching me, maybe a bit dodgy, or a homeless person. I thought it was probably a homeless person and he’s probably trying to get away from me. So, I thought I’m going to go into the scrub and say ‘hello, are you okay’?
I went over to the scrub to go in, I went in a couple of feet, maybe to try and eyeball what it was. The sound had stopped. Then I heard the sound again, but it was going away from me, it was getting further away.
Then I just saw basically a huge, very darkish brown, mid to dark brown it’s hard to say because it was dark in there, hairy creature, minimum 7 feet tall, hairy man.
It didn’t have a snout, it had a big nose, big jaw, wouldn’t say it looked like a gorilla, everything about it was big. Big head, shoulders and back was huge. I saw hair on it, I didn’t see a neck, everything about it was very chunky and stumpy, like a body builder look about it. Human-ish head, very hairy all over, and the face… couldn’t see any white skin or anything.
I think it was a male, because of its body posture, the way it moved. Silverback gorillas or a dominant male posture will say ‘I’m not scared of you, I’m the boss, I’m confident’, and this is what I got from this thing. The way it walked the way it was moving; it was like it was saying ‘I own this place’. When something is giving that body posture back… everything about it was giving off a vibe like, I’ve seen you and you’re not a threat.
It was very big, and heavy, you can tell when something’s heavy. Kangaroo’s hop and hit branches, I’ve heard that many times, this wasn’t hopping, this was stepping. It was walking forward away from me into the scrub on an angle. I only saw the side view, so I sort of seen the left side of it down to its legs, down to its shoulder. It’s pretty much turned and went off on a 40-45 degree angle into the thicker scrub. It was moving away from me, and it was like ‘okay I’ve seen you; I know you’re onto me, I’m moving away from you’.
It was going behind the trees and in the scrub, like it was straddling through the bush, stepping over some of the stuff, like ploughing through it, like it didn’t mean anything to it. It knew what it was doing, and not parting the way…it just knew how to walk through the bush. You could tell it has been doing this a long time, it wasn’t stealth, it was like a bulldozer, it goes where it wants, it just did what it wanted.
It was like…the scrub was its home. It was at home in there, it knew what it was doing, where it was going. It didn’t have any trouble banging the daylights out of the bush as it walked through. You could hear it hitting branches which a human would have a very hard time doing. He had no problems walking through and the stride was huge. It was taking a bigger stride than I could and I’m 6 foot 2.
He or she knew what I was up to, obviously keeping an eye on me I think. I think it was watching me the whole time, and I didn’t know it. It had seen me way before I seen it, I know that now. When I had that funny feeling when I got down toward the end, I’m sure that thing was watching me closer up, just from inside the scrub. Then when I twigged and turned around that’s when it realised I was onto it.
And I come over to the bush and started walking over and that was when it moved and started walking away. It was moving off into the darker thicker scrub, I assume it knew where it was going. It had to know where it was going, you’d have to know what you were doing going into that stuff because you’d get lost real quick if you were a human.
This thing basically just walked away. It was going one way, walking away very slowly, didn’t sound in a hurry. Its literally gone behind trees and scrub and just kept thumping away, I then just froze. I didn’t believe what I’d just seen, I was thinking ‘What the hell am I looking at? I’m seeing things. I don’t really believe myself; I haven’t really seen what I seen’. But I know what I seen; I know what I heard.
The tingle came up my spine, I’ve only had it a few times in my life where you know you can die right now.
I went…whatever I’m looking at, I know that thing can kill me at the drop of a hat, I’m out of here. Feeling like you know you’re going to die or could die; it was fight or flight and there was no way I was hanging around to fight that thing.
I knew not to run, I thought just get back to the fire track and just get out, just go.
If I could have run I would have bolted so fast up that track you wouldn’t have seen me for dead. I moved over to the middle so I was in the clear, so I had lots of clear either side. I just kept looking back, I thought don’t stare too much, don’t eye-ball it, and just get out of here, and that’s what I done.
I walked up as fast as I could without running to the top of the track, breathing pretty heavy and just thinking, no-one’s going to believe this… I’ve finally seen one, what I thought didn’t exist. I could tell that thing was wild and dangerous, I knew that thing could kill me if it wanted to.
Got to the top and stopped and caught my breath and thought, I’m out of here, I won’t be coming back.
The way I describe it to people is, imagine if you were in the bush and you saw a tiger, you know a tiger can kill you at any minute and you can’t do anything about it. He wants to kill you he can kill you. If someone said there’s tigers in the bush now and you have to go bushwalking without a gun, I’d say what’s the point? Probability is its going to get me eventually. It’s that type of thing for me now, I know there’s something out there that I know can take me out whenever it wants.
When I try and explain it to people it makes you cranky, because most people don’t believe me. Not a very nice feeling. Because people don’t believe you everyone makes jokes out of it and makes fun of you. It’s very scary, I’m on my own, I love the bush, I really miss going bush-walking.
The Aboriginals that I met in WA, Bidyadanga in the North-West said ‘yep, no big deal, he’s just checking you out, they’re like humans, you get good ones and bad ones, bad ones will eat you, the good ones don’t want to know you and will go away’.
The thing I find bizarre is that all the time I’ve been bush-walking I’ve never seen anything, I can’t believe it took all this time for that to happen. Never really believed in [Yowies], sort of half believed it because there’s always new species being found. There could be anything there, maybe they were here a long time ago. Maybe it was a hybrid monkey thing.
What else is in the Australian bush, has hair like that, walks like any human being, but with bigger, heavy strides, totally upright, never on all fours. Just a giant, hairy human. So big and massive, I don’t know anything else in the Australia bush that does that.
Every time I hear people going missing in the bush, I get a funny feeling. People say they are elusive and secretive and obviously they are. How can the government not know? Because its near Canungra. There should be warning signs, no camping or camping at your own risk.
The vibe was just, don’t go any further. I won’t be doing that again, now that I know what’s out there. I’m too scared to go bushwalking now, because I know they’re there, and I know these things can kill you. I was close enough to know I could have died that day. It could have taken me in the bush, and I doubt anyone would have ever found me.
You wouldn’t get me camping on my own or even with other people, not at night-time. I won’t go anywhere near Tambourine, Lamington, O’Reilly’s, not in the daytime because that’s when I saw it.
It’s a pretty unnerving feeling, I get very frustrated because I love bush-walking. So since then, I don’t really go bush-walking, I’m too scared, and I wouldn’t go down there if you paid me a million dollars, it’s put me right off it, I know they’re real.
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