Three men from remote Queensland in Australia have reported an extended encounter with the legendary Bigfoot-like Yowie. But this was no normal Yowie experience, where people hear noises and find broken trees, for the three men say the animal moved in their direction and gave a loud roar.

 Seamus Fitzgerald and Stirling Slocock-Bennett, who reported an extended encounter with the legendary Yowie in Queensland, Australia. (Supplied)

When Mythology and Imaginations Manifest: The Australian Yowie

Whether you know it as Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti, the Abominable Snowman, or Yowie, this ape-like monster has resided in the collective consciousness of indigenous cultures all over the world for many centuries. Yowie is one of several names for the wild man archetype that is reported in the Australian outback that is heavily featured in Aboriginal oral history.

There exist tens of thousands of eyewitnesses who would shun me if I were to suggest they have all projected an archetype of mythology into an apparently unnatural event, or that everyone is suffering pareidolia. Therefore, this is yet another example of where believers will say “see, told you, more evidence” while sceptics will sigh in disbelief.

Aboriginal drawings of the mythical yowie. (Public domain)

Spotting a Yowie with Long Arms and an Ape-Like Face

This bizarre Yowie story first appeared in The Sun. Three plantation workers encountered the “hairy ape-like creature” on Saturday, December 4 2021, when they were driving to the Jimna Base Camp, a campsite set in the wilderness. One of the men said they first spotted the “slouched over figure” under a streetlight. Then, when the animal noticed the men, it turned in their direction. Eyewitness Seamus Fitzgerald told The Courier Mail that the animal had “very long arms” and an “apelike” face.

The word “Yowie” appears as early as 1875 in Rev. William Ridley’s book, Kámilarói and Other Australian Languages. The author noted that the Kámilarói people used the word Yō-wī to describe “a spirit that roams over the earth at night.” Today, the Yowie is generally described as a hairy ape-like animal between 2 and 3.5 meters (6.5 to 11.5 ft) high, its feet are described as being much larger than a human’s, and its nose is most often described as being much wider and flatter.

During this so-called Yowie sighting, three men claim they saw a hairy ape-like creature. (slaw1949 / Adobe Stock)

Was it a Boar or an “Unknown Entity”

Dean Fitzgerald said that at first sight the men thought it was “a boar or a really big animal.” However, he added that when they approached the creature it ran away from them in a “very apelike” manner. We were in “utter disbelief” of what we were seeing, explained Stirling Slocock-Bennett, the second eye-witness. He said the group was “immediately confused when it crossed paths with the unknown entity.”

Dean Harrison said the animal was like “nothing I had ever seen before in my entire life,” and he said he thought he was going to die. He said the animal started running ahead of him, so he veered away from the forest tree line. Supporting his story, he claims he was on the phone at the time and the woman on the other end heard the whole “life-changing event.”

Artist’s impression of a Yowie standing with a deceased wallaby in his hand. In the corner is a size comparison that shows a 1,80m man and a 2,10m Yowie. (Tim Bertelink / CC BY-SA 4.0)

The Yowie Hunt Team Were Poorly Organized

The men went hiking soon after the incident to try and find the animal, but Dean said they “weren’t organized very well, too many people and too loud.” This was a classic Yowie encounter, where three men all claim to have seen a cryptid, but nobody filmed it. Furthermore, if it was slouched under a light there would surely have been hair samples? However, nothing tangible exists to support the men’s claims.

Notwithstanding, Dean went so far as to say that during the encounter the unknown animal “roared.” Many Yowie reports include a loud roar, most famously the Yowie incident at Candole State Forest in 2007. A 2018 ABC News article spoke with Rod Benfield, one of the admins of the Coffs Harbor and Mid North Coast yowie sightings and research group, who says he encountered the creature up close. Feelings of “dread and outright fear” consumed him when he heard the ape-man roar “louder than a lion.”