Post by encounter on Sept 20, 2015 10:35:31 GMT 10
I have had a major encounter with a yowie when living in the bush in northern NSW around 15 years back. Before that in the 80's I had seen footprints near a river in Bathurst NSW, didnt know much about it until I got some indigenous knowledge about what I saw. When I recently came to this area I had another but not so close encounter with a yowie around the Deua National Park.
The following details my Mullumbimby close very close encounter with a yowie, and also gives a little background leading to that:
In the early 2000’s I was living in far northern New South Wales (NSW) in a mountainous area only a few kilometres inland of the coast ( for reference the well known coastal towns not far from my residence as the crow flies were Byron Bay and Brunswick Heads). The place I was living in at the time of this incident was Mt Jerusalem National Park (which used to be called Mullumbimby State Forest). A year prior to moving there I had been re-awakened to thoughts about yowies when I encountered a very large four toed humanoid footprint in the mud next to the sub rainforest road I was walking on in Mullumbimby (I had seen something almost exactly the same almost twenty years prior to that on an isolated [from human traffic] river bed in Bathurst NSW – which aboriginal students told me were yowie and that sometimes they will leave a town if a yowie starts living nearby). I was therefor aware of yowies though still had not researched too much, the internet was a new knowledge ground for me and I had not yet come to researching it for information on yowies and or other vary different than the norm encounters in my life.
On the mountain I often heard tree tapping in a rhythm which was answered across the bush (which one would acquaint to a human action though humans were not there) and a call I came to know, which I later came to accept as a general yowie call. So basically I was aware of the possibility of yowies where I lived, didn’t know a lot about them, nor had I ever researched their sound (didn’t know there was info on the sound at that time).
MULLUMBIMBY ENCOUNTER IN DETAIL
Though I am concerned at how mythical in terms of encounter this may look, to be accurate I have to say it actually was the classic dark and mysterious night when all the sound in this usually very noisy bush (filled with all sorts of frog songs, night bird sounds, possums and koala sounds and sadly sounds of animals being strangled by the large pythons ) went silent. I had been preparing to go to bed upstairs in my sort of hippy built split level house (the top level sort of half the house and you could see down to the floor below from the stairwell area). At the time I wasn’t tired but being on a shared solar power system with a cottage nearby (the renters there had gone out for the night) I usually couldn’t have lights on at leisure so I would often just go upstairs to the bed to watch the tiny black and white thirty dollar TV or use a torch to read at night. I had left the veranda doors on the main floor below unlocked and actually not properly closed one of the doors so it was slightly open. These doors were really all that was between the open plan living room and the outside veranda.
Now when the bush went quiet on that dark night, it was actually quite alarming, I mean usually the night sound there was very, very loud. I naturally looked out the window from the bedroom which faced the suddenly silenced bush area below - that area led on through the mountain ranges across the state border to Queensland and Mt Warning (a mountain with tunnels said to be used by yowies). Suddenly in the silence of the bush came a sound of something very large thumping through it, breaking branches and sticks, moving at a very fast pace in the direction of my house. I am a woman who was living alone just with my cat and this was quite concerning. From my veranda side (also the upstairs bedroom side of the house) there was a steep gully which no human could just run up to get to the house - but after thrashing through the area below, this thing was doing just that , running up the steep gulley now not far from my veranda.
Now, there are a number of animals in the Australian night which can thrash through the bush when spooked such as large kangaroos but there were no large kangaroos there nor did the sound match anything I had heard previously (and I have lived in a number of very bushy areas around Australia, and have learnt to recognise the night sounds in all types of situations). Up there, there were only the very small wallabies and even if spooked you wouldn’t just hear one thrashing through the bush nor would it make so much sound - nor would it be that type of sound. Further to that most creatures that make a noise when moving through the bush are constantly stopping for food or to take note of any danger. I started to wonder on the possibility this was a yowie due to the way it was moving through the bush non stop, human in manner but more powerful, and much faster.
My fears were scarily answered when the thing running up the gully, which had made everything go abnormally quiet, started to walk on the veranda - it was a human style walk, clearly bipedal but much, much heavier than a human. It was so heavy the house shook and my upper level with it. I looked at my cat and she was asleep, she oddly stayed asleep through the whole even until the morning.
I remembered the veranda doors were not locked and one of them was partially open - I hoped it wouldn’t come in... but it did come in! It seemed to be pacing on the floor below. At the same time I heard the same heavy bipedal movement outside on the ground near the veranda and realised I may have two such visitors. Hard to explain why, but I had a feeling they were looking for something, like they were angry and looking for something. I went for my torch as I had read (with the little I knew about yowies) that they may not like light. I quietly got to the top of the stairwell and shined the torch absolutely straight ahead, which lit the wall ahead (the stairwell went toward the wall and then a slight platform where it changed direction to 180 degrees down a few steps down to the lower floor ). You could look over to the left when sitting at the top of the stairwell and see most of the floor below. I felt shining my torch at the the wall might not offend whatever was down there but at the same time give a sign I had a torch.
It kept pacing. Understand that this was all over in about seven minutes but I could discuss it as if it were a month of little events. While it paced below I began to think I should really look at it, I argued with myself that this was likely to be the only time in my life I would see it . I say argue with myself because I was getting a strong feeling that no matter what, don’t look. I decided that whether I might die or not, that one can’t live life not seeing and I have to take a look. I wanted to connect and I wanted to confirm the greater possibilities of our existence and our earth. I said to myself now was the time - now, be brave no matter what happens, do it now, have a look – just as I said that and made ready to turn slightly and move my torch to the creature below the creature issued this massive roar growl, a sound I had never heard before, this sound filled the house so primal and so al encompassing. …. That sound did not belong to any Australian creature I knew, and there is no human in size or frame who could have the capacity for it I know of in our society. This massive roar had a growl underneath it and truly was unique in terms of anything I have hear. I will not forget it, I have not forgotten it.
At the time my deeper inner response was like an ancient recognition I cant describe in this format of discussion. In terms of my immediate physical response, well that was lead by my deepest primal reaction, just stay still, do not move, do not think on a movement, wait for what comes without panic as there is nothing now to do, what happens next is what happens, be calm and just wait on the outcome as it will be.. I sat absolutely fixed, absolutely still with torch still toward the wall. I really, really thought that that creature subconsiously instructed me not to look - not to look and everything would be OK. There was stillness in the house for a moment after this roar-growl. Noone was moving. But then it paced a bit more and slowly walked out on to the veranda and left.
I still didn’t move except to look around to my cat who was still amazingly aseep - that roar was so loud but she was still asleep. I called to her but she was so deeply asleep I realised this was not normal for her.
The bush in the gully area from when this creature or both had come, now started to come alive with the normal nightly choras of sound but the area in which the creatures loudly headed (my front door side) became very silent.They headed to the very little hut on the hill on the front door side of my house, though I knew the guy who lived there with no electircity was not in.
I then began to feel amazingly tired. I mean abnormally tired. Having lived by myself many years I was used to doing all nighters awake if there was danger but I wanted to go to my bed and sleep in such strength I found it so absolutely difficult to keep my eyes open. I knew that was wrong, it must be wrong to sleep as danger could still be about. I did my best to stay awake. I felt that it was possible I was psychically being asked to sleep, as truly the need to sleep was so hard to fight and clearly it was a circumstance in which I needed to remain alert and concious. I sat up but would not lie down until finally I heard the people living in the cottage across from me come up the mountain. I waited till they went into their house, and for half hour till they turned off their lights and went to sleep. Then I went to sleep.
Next morning I seemed to forget until three guys (who lived in a place on the other side of the gully and next valley in a sense) came to my door with a dog - they wanted to know if I knew where it came from. The dog had apparently been barking throughout the night and came to their cottage. Just before they left it occured to me to ask if anything strange happened to them the night before. They said it had. I then , very very carefully asked if they thought maybe.... maybe there were yowies and this was a yowie encouter. They laughed at me, as I feared.... but then the senior of the three ended his laugh with "Of Course". They all went on to tell me about the yowies in the area and that the yowies came the night before. They had a go at the younger guy who was in a position to see the yowie that also entered their cottage but he was too scared to look - I fully understood!. After they left I saw a lot of those markings near the house which are spoken about in connection with the yowies - the grass area completely flattened looking like maybe two slept there (went brown in two days and this is a lush area).
Other yowie events have happened since, but I never had heard this roar growl until that night (and had never read or heard of it prior to that night) and have not heard it again. I spend a lot of time with nature and have had various encounters our society might say not to be the norm, there’s much to know out there. I haven’t told of other types of encounter and really it’s not necessary to do so for conventional discourse. I have told of this just because it seems to have some place now in conventional discourse and because I have wanted to know if others have heard this sound before – the effect of it is something only another experiencer could discuss.
The following details my Mullumbimby close very close encounter with a yowie, and also gives a little background leading to that:
In the early 2000’s I was living in far northern New South Wales (NSW) in a mountainous area only a few kilometres inland of the coast ( for reference the well known coastal towns not far from my residence as the crow flies were Byron Bay and Brunswick Heads). The place I was living in at the time of this incident was Mt Jerusalem National Park (which used to be called Mullumbimby State Forest). A year prior to moving there I had been re-awakened to thoughts about yowies when I encountered a very large four toed humanoid footprint in the mud next to the sub rainforest road I was walking on in Mullumbimby (I had seen something almost exactly the same almost twenty years prior to that on an isolated [from human traffic] river bed in Bathurst NSW – which aboriginal students told me were yowie and that sometimes they will leave a town if a yowie starts living nearby). I was therefor aware of yowies though still had not researched too much, the internet was a new knowledge ground for me and I had not yet come to researching it for information on yowies and or other vary different than the norm encounters in my life.
On the mountain I often heard tree tapping in a rhythm which was answered across the bush (which one would acquaint to a human action though humans were not there) and a call I came to know, which I later came to accept as a general yowie call. So basically I was aware of the possibility of yowies where I lived, didn’t know a lot about them, nor had I ever researched their sound (didn’t know there was info on the sound at that time).
MULLUMBIMBY ENCOUNTER IN DETAIL
Though I am concerned at how mythical in terms of encounter this may look, to be accurate I have to say it actually was the classic dark and mysterious night when all the sound in this usually very noisy bush (filled with all sorts of frog songs, night bird sounds, possums and koala sounds and sadly sounds of animals being strangled by the large pythons ) went silent. I had been preparing to go to bed upstairs in my sort of hippy built split level house (the top level sort of half the house and you could see down to the floor below from the stairwell area). At the time I wasn’t tired but being on a shared solar power system with a cottage nearby (the renters there had gone out for the night) I usually couldn’t have lights on at leisure so I would often just go upstairs to the bed to watch the tiny black and white thirty dollar TV or use a torch to read at night. I had left the veranda doors on the main floor below unlocked and actually not properly closed one of the doors so it was slightly open. These doors were really all that was between the open plan living room and the outside veranda.
Now when the bush went quiet on that dark night, it was actually quite alarming, I mean usually the night sound there was very, very loud. I naturally looked out the window from the bedroom which faced the suddenly silenced bush area below - that area led on through the mountain ranges across the state border to Queensland and Mt Warning (a mountain with tunnels said to be used by yowies). Suddenly in the silence of the bush came a sound of something very large thumping through it, breaking branches and sticks, moving at a very fast pace in the direction of my house. I am a woman who was living alone just with my cat and this was quite concerning. From my veranda side (also the upstairs bedroom side of the house) there was a steep gully which no human could just run up to get to the house - but after thrashing through the area below, this thing was doing just that , running up the steep gulley now not far from my veranda.
Now, there are a number of animals in the Australian night which can thrash through the bush when spooked such as large kangaroos but there were no large kangaroos there nor did the sound match anything I had heard previously (and I have lived in a number of very bushy areas around Australia, and have learnt to recognise the night sounds in all types of situations). Up there, there were only the very small wallabies and even if spooked you wouldn’t just hear one thrashing through the bush nor would it make so much sound - nor would it be that type of sound. Further to that most creatures that make a noise when moving through the bush are constantly stopping for food or to take note of any danger. I started to wonder on the possibility this was a yowie due to the way it was moving through the bush non stop, human in manner but more powerful, and much faster.
My fears were scarily answered when the thing running up the gully, which had made everything go abnormally quiet, started to walk on the veranda - it was a human style walk, clearly bipedal but much, much heavier than a human. It was so heavy the house shook and my upper level with it. I looked at my cat and she was asleep, she oddly stayed asleep through the whole even until the morning.
I remembered the veranda doors were not locked and one of them was partially open - I hoped it wouldn’t come in... but it did come in! It seemed to be pacing on the floor below. At the same time I heard the same heavy bipedal movement outside on the ground near the veranda and realised I may have two such visitors. Hard to explain why, but I had a feeling they were looking for something, like they were angry and looking for something. I went for my torch as I had read (with the little I knew about yowies) that they may not like light. I quietly got to the top of the stairwell and shined the torch absolutely straight ahead, which lit the wall ahead (the stairwell went toward the wall and then a slight platform where it changed direction to 180 degrees down a few steps down to the lower floor ). You could look over to the left when sitting at the top of the stairwell and see most of the floor below. I felt shining my torch at the the wall might not offend whatever was down there but at the same time give a sign I had a torch.
It kept pacing. Understand that this was all over in about seven minutes but I could discuss it as if it were a month of little events. While it paced below I began to think I should really look at it, I argued with myself that this was likely to be the only time in my life I would see it . I say argue with myself because I was getting a strong feeling that no matter what, don’t look. I decided that whether I might die or not, that one can’t live life not seeing and I have to take a look. I wanted to connect and I wanted to confirm the greater possibilities of our existence and our earth. I said to myself now was the time - now, be brave no matter what happens, do it now, have a look – just as I said that and made ready to turn slightly and move my torch to the creature below the creature issued this massive roar growl, a sound I had never heard before, this sound filled the house so primal and so al encompassing. …. That sound did not belong to any Australian creature I knew, and there is no human in size or frame who could have the capacity for it I know of in our society. This massive roar had a growl underneath it and truly was unique in terms of anything I have hear. I will not forget it, I have not forgotten it.
At the time my deeper inner response was like an ancient recognition I cant describe in this format of discussion. In terms of my immediate physical response, well that was lead by my deepest primal reaction, just stay still, do not move, do not think on a movement, wait for what comes without panic as there is nothing now to do, what happens next is what happens, be calm and just wait on the outcome as it will be.. I sat absolutely fixed, absolutely still with torch still toward the wall. I really, really thought that that creature subconsiously instructed me not to look - not to look and everything would be OK. There was stillness in the house for a moment after this roar-growl. Noone was moving. But then it paced a bit more and slowly walked out on to the veranda and left.
I still didn’t move except to look around to my cat who was still amazingly aseep - that roar was so loud but she was still asleep. I called to her but she was so deeply asleep I realised this was not normal for her.
The bush in the gully area from when this creature or both had come, now started to come alive with the normal nightly choras of sound but the area in which the creatures loudly headed (my front door side) became very silent.They headed to the very little hut on the hill on the front door side of my house, though I knew the guy who lived there with no electircity was not in.
I then began to feel amazingly tired. I mean abnormally tired. Having lived by myself many years I was used to doing all nighters awake if there was danger but I wanted to go to my bed and sleep in such strength I found it so absolutely difficult to keep my eyes open. I knew that was wrong, it must be wrong to sleep as danger could still be about. I did my best to stay awake. I felt that it was possible I was psychically being asked to sleep, as truly the need to sleep was so hard to fight and clearly it was a circumstance in which I needed to remain alert and concious. I sat up but would not lie down until finally I heard the people living in the cottage across from me come up the mountain. I waited till they went into their house, and for half hour till they turned off their lights and went to sleep. Then I went to sleep.
Next morning I seemed to forget until three guys (who lived in a place on the other side of the gully and next valley in a sense) came to my door with a dog - they wanted to know if I knew where it came from. The dog had apparently been barking throughout the night and came to their cottage. Just before they left it occured to me to ask if anything strange happened to them the night before. They said it had. I then , very very carefully asked if they thought maybe.... maybe there were yowies and this was a yowie encouter. They laughed at me, as I feared.... but then the senior of the three ended his laugh with "Of Course". They all went on to tell me about the yowies in the area and that the yowies came the night before. They had a go at the younger guy who was in a position to see the yowie that also entered their cottage but he was too scared to look - I fully understood!. After they left I saw a lot of those markings near the house which are spoken about in connection with the yowies - the grass area completely flattened looking like maybe two slept there (went brown in two days and this is a lush area).
Other yowie events have happened since, but I never had heard this roar growl until that night (and had never read or heard of it prior to that night) and have not heard it again. I spend a lot of time with nature and have had various encounters our society might say not to be the norm, there’s much to know out there. I haven’t told of other types of encounter and really it’s not necessary to do so for conventional discourse. I have told of this just because it seems to have some place now in conventional discourse and because I have wanted to know if others have heard this sound before – the effect of it is something only another experiencer could discuss.
