Location: Mt Hotham Victoria
Event: Encounter
Date: 2015
Male Witness.
We were heading up to Harrietville, up to Dinner Plain, it was Saturday morning. We started heading up there quite late, it was pretty cold and frosty. It was early May, start of the snow season. We had a Renault back then with amazing lights that shone all the way up.
We’ve done this run multiple times, my wife was driving, I was a passenger, she was doing about 50ks an hour. It’s a two-lane road there but we tend to drive in the middle at night time in the snow season.
We were coming up this hill bit of a wind, coming around a corner, a bend. We come around this corner, and I remember seeing it on the left-hand side, as its walked across the road to the right-hand side, and I tell ya…I’m not saying I know what it was but bloody hell it was huge.
It was probably close to 7 ft tall I reckon without getting out and measuring, and it would have been probably as wide or wider than a really big armchair. Like an armchair standing up, but in some way it was graceful. A gigantic thing, it was light in colour I remember that. It was like it had dreadlocks but not tight knit, but they were all individual strands of hair, they were quite thick or in ringlets of sorts, just wet and dirty hanging down all the way.
It was like a dirty blonde, [witnesses wife described the hair as blonde / white hair]. Couldn’t see if it was carrying anything in its hands, I wear glasses and didn’t have them on because I wasn’t driving. I don’t actually think I focused on its hands, I do remember one of the hands looked very dark and dirty, but it had no hair on the hand, there was very little hair coming from, I guess just after the wrist it sort of stopped having hair, there was a section of no hair on the hands. I don’t know if I could say it had 5 fingers, I can remember distinctly seeing 2.
Walking across the road on 2 legs, there was a slight swing of the arm from what I could see from the right-hand side, more like a sway like its shoulder would move, from side to side. The head was pretty straight, but the shoulders would have a slight move which would move that right arm. Couldn’t really see the left arm.
The head had a lot of hair on it, quite hairy, and I really couldn’t tell but it was shaped more like a thimble of sorts. Almost like a V shaped upper body, then came out a bit more I guess where the hips or butt would come out a bit more, and the legs seemed really, very solid, it looked like it could really hurt you.
It was definitely quite upright, very solid in its stance, didn’t seem to have a hunched back.
It’s walked very slowly with big steps though, really big steps, and solid, it looked just so solid, and it kept going across the road, and it sort of moved into where there was an embankment on the side of the road.
I turned my head to watch it walk from behind, we had a station wagon so I could see out the back pretty well, I could see it walk away, it was kind of like we’d had no impact on it at all. It didn’t seem to be fussed by the fact we were driving round the road, that the lights had hit it or that we were in its area/territory, but it kept walking. It was quite happy; it was focused on whatever it was doing, and it was on its way.
I know my wife saw a face, I didn’t see a face just the side of the head because I glanced away for a sec and then I looked at her while she was still focused on it.
I looked at her and I could see her face and she started to get closer to the steering wheel and hold on a bit tighter around that corner.
It didn’t look at me, but I took focus off it to look at my wife because I’m thinking, ‘hang on…is she actually seeing this?’. So I saw it, it lasted about 15 seconds or so, but I remember looking over at my wife thinking OMG, are you seeing this? No words were spoken until after we passed it.
I remember I turned around to look face on to where we were going, I said to my wife “Did you see that?” and she goes “Did you see it?” And I said “yep” and that was it and she sped up a little bit.
I can still remember what it looks like, it was like so huge and solid it looked so, so solid, massive in size and I just remember going, geez…that’s what I think it is.
I was just focused on its entire mass. It was on her side of the car; I had the car and the whole door of that side and her covering a lot of my view. I could only see the very start of it, but God I tell ya…it was bloody massive.
We got to our destination, set up our tent, I actually fell asleep, but my wife stayed awake all night tending the door and the fire. I think she thought if there was a fire nothing would come back.
We are professional people who run a business; my wife is Aboriginal and has previously worked as a police officer for some time. We don’t drink or take drugs, we are very clean skin, so no way we were hallucinating.
We love the snow and camping, but we haven’t been back to that area to camp again; it was one of our favourite places.
Next encounter days later…
There were Fireworks on the mountain for something, can’t remember what it was for.
We decided to do a lot of hiking. We moved into JB Hut in Dinner Plain after the first night and got settled in.
We’d done a hike, and it was starting to get late. We’d decided to do the 5k walk from where the Hutt is, up to the top of Mount Hotham.
We love the snow, we’re snow boarders so it’s something we really wanted to do, so we started doing this walk, and got a fair way up there.
I remember us walking up, we went on the right side of the road where the cars were coming towards us so we could see the lights. Because it was pretty dark now.
We had little torches, we’d gone a bit further, and we could hear this rustle, and we started hearing…
It was like a deep noise (makes moaning sound), but it had a quite high-pitched noise at the very end of it. And we could hear things rustling and the footsteps sounded like it wouldn’t have been more than 5-6 metres in off the road into the bush, but the noise sounded like it was right there near where we were, like a metre away. Like it was following us but keeping its distance in but going in the same direction.
We were starting to get a bit scared, my wife was on the left, closest to the edge of the road.
We stopped for a sec; that’s when we heard the big bellowing noise.
I guess (the sound) reminded me of a hippo or elephant, but a lot deeper, but a high pitch like voice strain at the end. Nothing I’ve ever heard before.
We decided to turn around, I pushed her to the middle of the road, and I’ve gone to the side of the embankment/the tree area.
I shone the torch to the bottom a little bit, not really wanting to see anything. I figured, worst case scenario, my wife is fit, she will be able to run to the car and I will attack whatever it is, and it will attack me, and she can get to the car and get back to Omeo.
We could hear it walking with us, then we went to the middle of the road, started a jog, we sort of stopped hearing the footprints and rustling, then we bolted. Got to the hut and pushed everything we could up against the doors, grabbed the axe and laid by the fire all night.
I don’t recall smelling anything, and it sort of felt to me like it was a female, or a young inquisitive male.
Even though it was scary, it didn’t feel like it was aggressive. If it wanted to hurt us it could have.
We never used to have issues driving at night, but now we don’t drive at night.
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