Drawing of a Yowie. Source Cryptomundo

Loren Coleman over at Cryptomundo posted a very intriguing story of a seasoned Yowie (Australian Bigfoot) researcher that reports have a close encounter with the creature. He was “tackled”.

Here is the story from the AAP:

Article from: Australian Associated Press

IT never rains but it pours – in this case, improbable events.

Hot on the heels of last week’s wild weather in southeast Queensland comes a hunter of mythological beasts – Tim the Yowie Man.

Tim – who uses no surname and can be almost as elusive as his quarry – says there is a direct correlation between significant rain events and sightings of the yowie.

“The soaked soil and muddy bogs created by the heavy rain are more conducive to animals, including yowies, leaving their footprints,” Tim said.

He said last week’s rain could make “a large hairy bipedal hominoid creature” uncomfortable and force it from deep jungle canyons into the open.

So Tim has rushed from that other capital of strange mysteries – Canberra – to Springbrook in the Gold Coast hinterland, a village he describes as the yowie capital of Australia for its many sightings.

So far he’s seen nothing – but that hasn’t put him off.

“I’m quietly confident of finding some sort of evidence such as hair or footprints of the mystery beast,” he said.

“If I’m really lucky I may even get to see one.”

Dean Harrison of Australian Yowie Research says he has just returned from Springbrook, bearing photographs of footprints he believes are of a female yowie and her young trailing along behind.

“They seem to be quite passive around that area compared to other areas that we’ve been to,” Mr Harrison said.

He said tales of yowies near Springbrook date back to before European settlement.

Mr Harrison said on his latest expedition he was rugby-tackled by a yowie at 3am near Gympie.

“This one knocked me flying backwards. I landed in a rockpool,” he said.

Australian Yowie Research has been nominated for a Bent Spoon Award on the website of Australian Skeptics, a group that investigates paranormal and pseudoscientific claims.

Given that Dean Harrison has been in the field for quite sometime now, he feels that people might think that this is all a lie.
Dean Harrison emails Loren Coleman with the following:

“The event was one that I shall never forget.

Unfortunately I had [with me] a first timer, who wasn’t present during the attack…, who is trying to call the entire incident a hoax….

It was certainly not [a hoax]. The bruising I received he says was caused by a rock that I repetitively struck myself with.

The rest of the crew tailed the creature for quite some time.

I got hit hard enough to send me back landing in a rock pool.

I’ve been around too long to make things up. I have no need to.

All I can say, is that it was bloody scary. Especially the way it ran at me.”
Dean Harrison

Given that the reports of Yowie interaction with animals and humans has been on the rise in Australia, what do you think?

I like the comment a Cryptomundo reader left:

graybear responds: May 28th, 2009 at 1:11 pm

As Dean Harrison says, he has no reason to invent his encounter, and he is an experienced bushman; he knows what should and what should not be there. This is the kind of event, an eye witness account by an experienced individual, which would be good enough to convict someone if it were presented as evidence in a criminal trial. Unfortunately it also is the type of event which leaves the scoftics musing about how unreliable humans are as witnesses. Bruises too, I suppose.
As the Mythbusters might say, this one is Plausible.

Serious researchers who have spent most of their lives in the field know how damaging hoaxes could be. We’ve heard of it in the past. From the “Bigfoot body” to the Surgeon’s Photo of Nessie.