"A peculiar animal, five feet high, standing on his two hind legs and at the same time brushing away with claw-like hands the unkempt hair from his eyes. The animal is covered in long white hair and when seen was uttering the cries which had been disturbing the neighbourhood. " (A description of a Yowie seen in Mudgee district in 1903)

" The Kow Swamp people have thick brow ridges, very large faces and the biggest teeth that have ever existed in modern humans. And that creates a problem. They look ancient but at 10,000 years of age they're much younger than the lightly built Mungo people" Dr Alan Thorne

Over the years, there have been well over 3000 reports of a huge, hairy, ape like creature with very big feet. It is always seen alone, is extremely shy of humans, screams offensively and like the nth American big foot, possesses a vile odour.

So is the Yowie a figment of the Australians love of grog? In regards to mystical creatures like the Mermaid, some sceptics have noted a tendency of humans to imagine what they want to exist. Indeed this theory explains why sailors with blue balls looked at dolphins and saw aquatic ladies built for giving blowjobs. However it defies logic as to why someone would want to imagine a big hairy primate that emits a vile odour. After all, a trip to the Melbourne fruit markets would find plenty of these!

Other sceptics have cited the tendency of American shooters to mistake bushwalkers for deer as evidence that people have failing eyesight in the wilderness. Indeed there does seem to be such a case of mistaken identity in one Yowie sighting. In 1987 the Alice Springs' police station received a call from a frightened family. The family had stopped for a cup of tea after a morning of rabbit hunting. Then a huge ape like creature, two meters tall and covered in hair, leapt out of an empty water tank and began walking towards them. The family fled to their truck and the creature ran after them before disappearing into the bush. The man, Frank Burns believed it was a man; however, the woman, Phyllis Kenny, told the press she could tell the difference between man and beast and this was definitely a beast.

The following day police searched the area and found a man, 203 centimetres tall weighing an estimated 127-159 kg (or about two Oprah Winfreys) sitting naked by the roadside. He was then taken to the local mental hospital.

Of the reported sightings that haven't later revealed to be an escaped mental patient or a hermit in jungle attire, some almost appear credible. In 2000, a Mr Steve Piper was filming in the Brindabella Ranges south of Canberra when he captured a hairy figure limping through the bush. The film was subsequently entered into the public record when shown on the prime-time news. Local university students later claimed it a hoax played by walking through the bush in an old koala suit. However Yowie experts dismissed their confession, saying that it was their claims rather than the film that was a fabrication.

 
Stever Piper video

Australia's foremost authority on the subject, Tim the Yowie Man, is convinced that Yowies do exist. Tim began his career as a mild mannered economist but his life changed after coming face to face with a Yowie during a bushwalking expedition. Tim realised his calling and gave up the figures to investigate those mysterious occurrences that others were too afraid to openly discuss. Tim named his genre "cryptonaturalism" and to this day, he remains the genre's only occupant.

The oral history of Aborigines also records a strange ape-like creature. Depending on which area of Australia the Aborigines lived and which tribe they belonged, they had names for the creature including "Noocoonah", "Doolagahl", "Gooligah", "Quinken", "Thoolagal", "Yaroma", "Yahoo", "Jingera", "Jimbra" and "Tjandara".

Could primates have evolved into humans in multiple regions and could one of those strains of primates evolved into the Yowie? There are some who would say yes!

 Evidence in support of the view comes from archaeological excavations at Kow Swamp by Professor Alan Thorne from the ANU. The skeletons showed Homo erectus features, such as thick brow ridges, very large faces and huge teeth. The Homo erectus features were perplexing for two reasons. Firstly, Homo erectus was not believed to have ever made it to Australia. The traditional Out-of-Africa theory proposes that they left Africa about 2 million years ago and spread throughout Eurasia, but never Australia. (The last of them were killed off in Indonesia about 30,000 years ago by invading Homo sapiens.) Secondly, the skeletons were only 10,000 years old, which made them younger than the Homo sapien skeletons in Australia that date back 50,000 years.

Some scientists have tried to argue the unusual skeletal shapes were the result of some kind of localised adaptation to the cold. They basically argue that the Homo sapiens of the area evolved to look like Homo erectus because the body shape was better suited to the climate. No only Australian population groups looked like them because the Kow Swamp people became geographically isolated for tens of thousands of years. Others have argued that the unusual head shapes were the result of cranial modification by mothers wrapping cloth around their infants' heads.

Both explanations show that seeing what they want to see is not a psychological trait limited to sex-starved sailors, American shooters or housewives going by the name of Phyllis. It defies logic to think that populations of Homo sapiens could become genetically isolated on relatively flat land in the area which is now the border of NSW and Victoria, but that genes continued to flow in every other part of Australia. It is also plain silly to think the Kow Swamp people invented cloth and used it to deform the heads of their babies, but they never actually thought that cloth could also be used to keep themselves warm. Most importantly, it defies probability that Homo erectus was able to make the trek from Africa to Bejing and Java, but not make the small crossing to West Papua, which was once part of the greater Australian land mass known as Sahul. Any animal that could make the migrations that it did, and which had survived in a range of different climates for 2 million years, was obviously smart. If the Kow Swamp skeletons had been found in Java and dated at 100,000 years, then they would be categorised as Homo erectus. Sometimes the theory really needs to be changed to suit the facts, not the facts changed to suit the theory.

Alan Thorne, the man who found the skeletons, indeed changed his theory to suit the facts he had unearthed at Kow Swamp. He concluded that Homo erectus was human and rather than being replaced by Homo sapiens emerging from Africa, bred with them. Admittedly, most people propose that Homo erectus was a little of the hairy side. Given Homo sapiens propensity for shaving legs, Brazilians, and tweezers up the noise, it may be deduced that human evolution has been on a road in which it isn’t the strongest or most adaptable that survive, it is the ones with the least body hair. In which case, the hairy Homo erectus may have retreated to the deep dark bush in shame. There, they found other hairy people, where they lived as outcasts from respectable society.

If the Yowie was not a remnant Homo erectus, could it have been an unusal marsupial? If a marsupial evolved into a wolf like creature, in a similar example of parallel evolution, could a marsupial also have evolved into a primate like creature? The fossil record shows there once existed a kangaroo three meters tall, weighing 300kg with long arms and front paws equipped with two extra-long fingers. Its face was flat and it had forward facing eyes. Could this have been the creature once referred to as "Noocoonah", "Doolagahl", "Gooligah", "Quinken"? As someone who reconstructed the fossil imagined:

"It's very tall when it's standing up, it's higher than a man with a short face, with bifocal vision, massively thickset, and performing an action that is unique to these animals I believe, is that they can raise their arms above their shoulders, and that's how they used to grasp vegetation and pull it down to eat. And so, if you have a thing like this, stooped, muscular... working through the trees and the bushes in the early morning, well, you might well imagine it's a man beast" Leigh Milne

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Yowie Power is a chocolate aimed at kids but often bought by adults. It is like an easter egg but inside there is a great surprise toy that the whole family can enjoy.

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Book writing - Some Yowie hunters have written books about the search for the Yowie. The most respected authority is Tim the Yowie Man.