Location: Mount. Buller area, Victoria
Victorian High Country
Event: Yowie Sighting
Date: Spanning Several Years Circa. 1980’s.
Time: Various
[Male Witness – Requested Public Anonymity]
Interview Recorded by Paul Cropper 13-05-2014
Witness:
Look, I'd be honest, I'm at the stage, I have shared this with some people over my life because I'll be 60 next birthday. To have someone that's prepared to listen and maybe believe what I'm about to tell you is probably a good thing. (Whether) you believe in me or not, (that’s) another thing.
Paul: Take us through your background and the experiences.
Witness:
We employed a lot of people on the mountain. One of dad's apprentices was [Name withheld by Request] who's currently the president of the [Withheld by Request]. So he's from a family of foundation farmers in the area. Best man (at my) wedding was a foundation family, he’s fifth generation, like myself.
Confidentiality is a must. I can mention names and I don't want to embarrass anyone. I'll be honest, the other one is [Name withheld by Request] who, I don't know if you know him, Mount Buller, but there's a [Withheld by Request]. trail so his family have been up there since the history of the mountain. He was actually with me on the third occasion when I saw something.
Paul: Take me through your experiences.
Witness:
I want to start with the third one because the first two actually happened when I was a child. And I was f’king traumatised. Don't mean to swear, but yeah, it really affected my life. Anyway, the third one would have happened about 1980. We had the contract to collect the garbage on Mount Buller. So we're taking the first load of rubbish to Mount Buller in those days. The (ski) tube was located adjacent to where the sewage plant is.
And we've gone down, it was about 25 to 50 mil of snow overnight, one to two inches. And we got to where we were going to dump. And the rubbish is spread everywhere. Now, this is the first time in all the years I've been doing this I'd ever seen such a mess.
And we both looked at each other, "What the hell's caused that?” So anyway, we go down, you've got to turn around and back.
And then I go out and release the lock on the rear of the tailgate on the bombardier over the snow vehicle, a tracked vehicle. I undo that, the gate opens, tip it up, the rubbish falls out. And I saw these footprints in the snow.
Now, the nearest V-Club to the tip up there is, from memory, it's called Sun Downer. And it'd probably be nearly a kilometre, I think, from memory. It's a fair way. Now, as a child, I've walked barefoot in the snow and you don't get very far. So I'm trying to work out why these footprints are there. You can clearly see the five indentations of the toes. And basically, they're probably a little bit wider than normal. Didn't notice an arch like you might, say, with a normal foot. This was a humanoid track. This was human.
And I was thinking, "What the f’ck is this? And I could feel something looking at me. And I looked over and there was a fox there looking at me. When you grow up, you'll know if you've been out in the bush, a lot of people, they can feel things looking... I turned over and looked at him and it's turned away from me and started looking at something down in the bush, but I couldn't see anything.
I'm going to tell you, it was probably one of the most solid things you'll ever hear. So you ready for that one?
Paul: Yes. Fire away.
Witness:
Alright, so I'm a bit out of breath... I'm going to tell you a story.
Paul: Yeah, sure.
Witness:
This would have happened about a year after that one (in 1981). This was around the year when my parents had transitioned from moving off the mountain to… we'd bought a 10-acre farm in Glenoy Road, which is 10 kilometres out of Mansfield on the Mount Buller Road. So we looked up the contract and we bought the business. We went from picking up rubbish to spreading sh’t!
All right, yeah, so we're basically going from collecting rubbish to spreading fertiliser. What's happened is Man From Snowy River's being filmed. [Name Withheld] hired a holiday house directly opposite from where we bought our farm when the film was being made. Now, the people that owned that had a son who was my age. And after the filming had wrapped up, he came up to visit to stay on his property. We hadn't seen him for a while because the filming had gone on and his house was occupied.
We'd organised a trip up to a place called Western Track. Now, we're all on motorbikes. We all loved exploring. Next door neighbour David. The [Name Withheld], again, another generation of farmers. I think they had a thousand acres between them. And again, [Name Withheld], as I just mentioned, with [Name Withheld].
All right, so we've headed up on our way. Now, the plan was to go to Western Track, which is an old logging track. And basically, we'd been up there once before and we were trying to find our way through to go to a place called Pineapple Flat, which is on the King River. So we had an objective where we were trying to find, but because of all the different logging tracks, the first time we went up there, we'd followed them and went to a dead end. So we had a map and everything, and keeping my mind around, probably 15, 16 years old, the five of us around that age.
So anyway, on the way to Western Track, we went up Buttercup Road, which turns into Carters Road. And just before Tomahawk Hut, there's a track to your right called the Number 3 Track. And that track takes you right up the top of the ridge to the beginning of where Western Track is. And when you get up the top, there's a panoramic view, basically the Devil's Eye Valley all that way down there. So we're just going along our merry way and we get halfway up this Number 3 Track.
And we come across this really strong, offensive, pungent odour. And it was that bad that we actually stopped and started talking about it. Now, our main discussion was trying to decide if it was something that had died, like a deceased roadkill smell. David and I were both discussing that it felt more like a fox smell. That has a really rancid odour of its own. So we had a cigarette and we're discussing it.
And I'll be honest, we had no idea what this smell was, but we knew and I knew that it wasn't either of those smells. It was just a rancid, off. I've never smelled it since and I've mentioned that I collected garbage. I grew up in the country, you know. So anyway, we didn't think any more of it.
We got on the bikes and David and I were still clinching our smokes. We were the better two riders. We were on our bikes every day. Anyway, about I estimate 30 to 50 metres up the hill was the switchback. Like a 180 degree corner. And you know when you're up in the high country on the hills and they put those roads in, on that corner they grade it so that when the water runs down it goes away from the road and it doesn't wash out. So, in this part of the road the saplings had grown. I estimate they were about anywhere from 6 to 8 to 10 to 12 foot. There was a sporadic mixture of gums that had come up because the water sits in that spot.
Anyway, the other three had gone around the corner so they didn't see what David and I saw. So they'd only smelled (it). I'm standing on my pegs (on the bike) and right on the apex of the corner I look over to my right hand side. And the first thing I see is this black thing. And I'm like, what the hell is that? And I see its palm. Its left arm is outstretched towards me and the hair on its arm is approximately 4 inches, so that's 100mm in metrics.
I'm just shocked. Because it, you know as I said I'm 16. I've been shooting. But what the hell is this.. with this hair on it and there's like, no neck. And I think I mentioned in my cover letter, you've got a picture on your website, like a thermal shot and it's got the profile of the side of the head. This looked identical to that. I could draw and describe what its head looked like, because there's no neck.
Now two of my mates, Big John is 6 foot 5 and the other fella, his step brother Justin is 6 foot 4. Justin was overweight and fat. And Big John was just a big boy. He could have lost a few pounds, but he was big. I don't estimate this thing was any bigger than them. In fact I think it may have been an inch or two shorter. But its girth was terrifying.
Its shoulders, in my mind, the dimensions I thought at the time were 4 foot across. That's what its shoulders were like. If this thing grabbed you and snapped, you'd be just snapped. Now as my eyes looked up to this head, I looked directly in its eyes. There's no white at all. It was just completely black. And if you ask me for a word to describe it, I don't know, maybe menacing, I honestly don't know. I've met people in my life that I've looked in their eyes and you think, have they killed someone? Or they want to kill me? You can tell.
This didn't have… it’s very hard to describe, but to actually get the shock and see something and be that close to it. There's two things that went through my mind. And I was thinking about this, how would I describe this to you today when I'm going to explain it. Did you see that viral (Internet) thing a few months back where “that motherf’cker's not real”, the girl on the plane?
Paul: Oh yeah. I remember that one.
Witness:
You remember that? Now I've got no idea what she was referring to but I can relate to her reaction. Does that make sense?
Paul: Yeah.
Witness:
That's the first, like if I'm trying to describe it in modern day terms, that was my reaction, obviously I'm not pointing my finger… that's the first thought. And I've thought about this like I'd said I'm 60, so this has happened like 40 odd years ago. And all my life I'm trying to think of why I had the next thought, but I did. And I thought, you lying fucking bastards. Everyone that's told me that this bit's not real, you can go fuck yourselves because what I'm looking at, I'm not even looking at it directly, I smelled (the) fucker.
So yeah, so that was the second reaction. Instant. Anyway, so that's all happened and that was my immediate thought. I'm still ogling at this thing… (David) looked at what I was looking at and he's seen it and he's gone f’ck. I could hear him… he's just screamed. Now he, there's a word for it… when your eyes bulged? I'll describe it this way, he looked like his helmet had turned into an astronaut helmet and someone ripped his eyes out and his eyes were popping out. He's on a TS-185 Suzuki, I'm on a DT-400 and he shot past me and I could not catch him.
We have just gone hell for leather up the number three track and we got past the other three, left them for dead and we got up to the top. And I mentioned already that at the top there at the beginning of the track there's a panoramic view… so we got up there… and we were literally, what the f’ck, did you see that, did you see that? And he started crying. I just blustered, I still cannot get over the adrenaline. I've competed in national titles and everything. This doesn't come close, this is pretty scary stuff.
Paul: When you're looking at this, how close was this thing to you on the track?
Witness:
Less than five metres probably.
Paul: Was it tucked away in the trees or was it a little more in the open?
Witness:
Well that's what I was trying to explain to you because on the 180 degree corner where the bulldozer cuts into the side of the hill to let the water run-off, that had grown up with saplings. As I said we're up to 10 or 12 foot high so it was in there. You couldn't really see it from the downhill side. It wasn't until you got adjacent with it, as I said at the apex of the corner, that you could over look over it and see where it had pushed the trees back. As I said its left arm was out and that's what I noticed was the long hair off that.
Paul: So it was actually hiding behind these smaller trees.
Witness:
I don't know. It's hard to explain because you're up north far here because the trunks of high trunks are a bit different down here. But when the young saplings grow, they've got to spread them out because they can grow really close together. So it doesn't take many to do full cover, if you know what I mean.
Paul: The hair, what was the colour of this thing?
Witness:
It was a dark brown, a really dark brown, almost black.
Paul: And when you're looking at this face, did you get a sense you're looking at a human or an animal or something else?
Witness: To be honest, my first, because of the blackness of the skin on the hand and the colour of the foot or hair, my immediate first thought was a baboon - but then I sort of said no. Does that make sense? My first thought was that's like a baboon but that's not it.
Paul: Yeah.
Witness:
It's not the first one I've looked in the face but the other one I was a child and it just brings up, it's completely different. But I don't want to go into that at the moment.
.
Paul: Were the arms similar to humans in terms of length or shorter or longer or…?
Witness:
Well it's hard, I'll be honest. I didn't see its right-hand arm. I'd say its arm length was a little bit longer than normal. It was hard to describe because of the hair length on it was distracting and the fact that it was still hiding… But I had a clear, 100% view of the arm and its face and neck and shoulders.
Now I'll just finish off what had happened when we got up to the top of the hill. Because we got no other way to go. We got to come back this way. So when the other three boys got up the top and we're still freaking, we're going, 'Did you see it?
Did you see it. And they're going, 'Did we see what?'. So we're trying to convince them that what we saw was real. And they thought, 'Oh yeah, you're trying to trick us.' David was crying and then they started to actually believe it.
So we had to come to a plan because, as I mentioned, we were exploring. We didn't take extra petrol with us. Now we had two ways we could go which we'd never explored. We didn't know. And we're 15 or 16, we're all on unregistered motorbikes. The parents knew where we were heading.
But we hadn't told (our parents) we were going to go the other way. So we had all these things to work out how we were going to get back. So in the end we decided we were going to just freewheel down the hill. The five of us together with all our engines off. Because being motorbikes you don't need the engine to run. You don't need any assistance.
So we thought that way if one of us gets grabbed, the rest of us will be together. So we went on the 'safety with numbers' theory basically. So we've all freewheeled down the hill. And when we came up to that hairpin where we'd seen it, David and I are pointing into that area and obviously they'd gone. And we actually stopped where we had the smoke. And the smell had completely gone. There was no trace of any foul odour…
Paul: Look, that's awesome, [Name]. Thanks, Heaps, for sharing that. We'll talk again.
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