Location: Mount Warrenheip, Victoria
Event: Yowie Sighting
Date: May, 1978
Time: Night
I was living at Dunnstown at the time and had just met a girl. There was an old house opposite Mount Warrenheip, on Old Melbourne Road and one of the old cockies at the pub one night said if I wanted to put some work into the old house, we could move into it.
One day we went up to have a look at it and it was pretty derelict, the sheep had been living in it and it was surrounded by massive pine trees. It was dark and gloomy and I didn’t like the feel of the place.
We happened to go back that night between 10pm and 12am. It was quite a bright stary night and we parked to one side of the house in front of a two metre high bush, then there was a farm fence and another two metre bush, and on the left hand side was the old house. You could see the side of the house lit up quite well.
We were just sitting there and all of a sudden out of the darkness came this shadow of a man. I was totally shocked because what was someone doing up there in a derelict house that time of night. As it was walking, it was swaying from side to side, not how a man would walk. Within a few seconds, I’m watching it and it disappeared. Then this massive silhouette of a black head popped up and seen me and ducked straight back down again.
I started the old FJ Holden and took off. Myself and my girlfriend looked at each other and said, ‘What the hell was that’. It really scared us. I had the worst gut feeling than I’d ever had. The first instinct was ‘Was it a man?’, but it was too big. It was a massive silhouette with big shoulders rolling from side to side, then ducked down and came back up from behind that bush. I must have scared it by looking directly at it.
It was a really strange experience that’s lived with me forever and it wasn’t until I started looking at Dean’s (Harrison) website that it all came back. Every time I think about it, I still get the chills after all these years.
The house at the time was sitting on its own directly opposite Mount Warrenheip. The nearest farmhouse was about half a kilometre either side of it and there was nothing else around there, so it was unusual for a man to be there.
Myself and my wife went back there last year for a look and from my recollection, the head of it would have just below the gutter which would have been about 8-1/2ft. It was definitely something out of the ordinary. Its side to side movement when it walked was a good 5 to 6”. I couldn’t see below the waist. It walked into the glow of the stars on that side of the house, it just seemed to glide in. Then it popped down and the head and shoulders popped back up and back down again like it was in shock. No neck, just shoulders and a head in one. It was staring at me from behind the bush and we were in shock.
I realised after that this was no man. It was just too big and out of character how it walked, and how it came out of the complete blackness from behind this house. All of a sudden it was there.
We didn’t know what it was because back then we’d never heard of Yowies before. The only thing we heard about at the time was black panther sightings on the news around Creswick and Mount Warrenheip.
When we were there during the day, I didn’t like the feel of the place. It was surrounded by pine trees with long branches stocking out, it was cold and dark and had a horrible feeling.
I remember praying the car was going to start because I didn’t know if this thing was going to come around the side of the car. I floored it. I was petrified.
Some people shut this stuff out, but I’ve never forgotten it, especially when we got onto your show, it all came flooding back. I still often dream about it at night and I can see every bit that happened. I still get that feeling when I think about it and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
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One week later at Tierneys Road which was about half a kilometre away, we had another encounter.
We’d played footy that day and went back to the local pub (The Shamrock) for a beer and at around 10pm we decided to go for a drive. We all piled into the EH Holden and off we went. We were telling jokes and had a couple of long neck beers with us and we ended up at Tierneys Road. It was a very frosty night.
I was sitting in the back seat on right hand side and I thought I heard something outside, but we were making that much noise laughing and carrying on that I didn’t take much notice of it. Then all of a sudden one of the guys in the front said, ‘There’s someone out there’.
We could hear a noise like a foot twisting on gravel and an almighty plodding of feet. It was pitch back outside and we had our light on in the car and then the two guys in the front took off down the track, and myself and two other guys [now outside the car] looked at the back window and there was a big swipe across the left hand side of the window in the ice.
I swiped the other side of the window and this swipe was twice the size of mine and we were dumbfounded by what was happening. Just as we were looking at that, we heard the barbed wire twang and within a second or two the two guys came running back absolutely petrified yelling, ‘Get in the car, we have to get out of here’.
We all piled in not knowing what was going on and headed back to the pub.
One of the guys in the front who had run after it was on the verge of crying, he was really shaken up. He said it was a big man. They’d gone 20 or 30 metres down the road and came back horrified. They came back with their tails between their legs and they were scared because of the size of it.
We were talking it over at the pub and one of the old locals sitting at the bar chirped up and said, ‘It was probably a Yowie’. We all said, ‘What’s a Yowie?’ and he said it was a Hairyman. We didn’t know what that was but spoke about it for the rest of the night and agreed to meet up there in the morning for a look.
Back at the time there were no houses along Tierney’s Road and it was full on blackberries right to the creek. In one section there was a hole through it like a freight train went through it and in the wire was all this red hair. I thought at the time a cow must have gone through there but I’d never seen a cow go through blackberries before. But here was all this red hair hanging off the fence.
Whatever it was went through that fence and the blackberries like someone had driven a car through it.
We had heard the scrape of ice on the back window and the feet in the gravel. That’s why we went to the back window because someone swiped it to take a look in. When I did my swipe, the shape was a very similar hand swipe over one half of the back window - but twice as big. When these guys took off after whatever this thing was, the foot stomping was so loud and it ran like the wind. I imagine it had nowhere to go because towards Mount Warrenheip there was about a 600-metre paddock until you hit where the bush started, so I think it had nowhere to go other than through those blackberries. The hair on the fence was about 4 to 5 inches long.
This was only week after I saw that thing at the house just up the road.
We sort of left it there and kind of forgot about it over the years – but I didn’t. Some of the other guys who I’ve lost contact with probably still think about it too, because it was quite a scary night.
Many years later while at the footy, I caught up with the guy in the front that was a bit shaken up, and he didn’t want to talk about it at all. He didn’t want to know about it. It made me feel better because I hadn’t stopped thinking about it and then I knew somebody else was thinking the same thing, it wasn’t just me.
…………………………….
I’ve only recently retired and an old mate of mine who lives in Gordon who works near where I worked, came into my workshop for a chat. I asked him this one day if he’d heard of a Yowie. He laughed at me and said ‘Nah, it’s bloody bull****’, so I left it at that. A week later he came back and said, ‘You know what you asked me last week about that Yowie, well, I’ve seen one’. He said he’d never told his wife, he’d never told anyone and I was not to tell anyone either.
He was cutting wood at Mount Egerton, which is just south of Gordon and quite thick with bush. He’d just tied his load up and he just happened to look up and there’s this big hairy bloke about 50 metres from him staring at him with just one hand up on a branch. He never moved a muscle, just looked at it and calmly got in his car and took off. This was in 1978, the same year as mine.
I’m glad I asked him. He never told anyone and asked me not to. He said it was big, it was hairy and it was a man but he didn’t know what it was.
I thought I would write in and tell of my experience and hopefully that will prompt someone else.
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