Location: Colo River, New South Wales
Event: Possible Yowie Encounter
Date: 1997
Hi Dean,
I was in a national park at Colo River several years ago and had an encounter with what I believe was a Yowie. I was with a friend rallying 2 cars after hours at around 11pm , when car 1 came off the road and into a clearing. I drove car 2 down a small embankment and was signalled by my friend Nav to stop where I was as he was stuck in some mud. The rear of car 1 was the closest to the tree line and car 2 was facing it about 4 metres away headlights to headlights. Both cars had the engines running. We tried to get car 1 out to no avail and made a lot of noise in the process.
We heard something large moving around in the bush and turned the engines off. It sounded as big as a horse and it was clearing a path through thick bush straight towards us. As it got closer, we could clearly hear footsteps, with twigs and sticks breaking with each step.
I honestly thought it could be a man judging by the foot steps, although I recall thinking it was odd that he didn't use the road which was at the same angle as the path it was making towards us.
After a few minutes, it reached the tree line and stopped. We could not see it as it was just behind the tree line in the shadow of car 1 from car 2's headlights being shone onto it. It watched us for a few moments and then I spoke to it, "Our cars stuck in the mud mate, can you give us a hand?". Nothing...It just kept watching us and we didn't know what was going on. It then started to growl and we realised it was not a man at all. It was a very low growl and we were asking each other "WTF is that?"
We both decided to get some sort of weapons as we were still quite brave at this point. I had a steering wheel lock and Nav had the heavy end of a 2 piece snooker cue.
While it was still growling, I said to Nav "I'm gonna throw the Clublock at it" and Nav said not to. As soon as it could see we were brandishing weapons in our hands, It started growling louder and louder until it started to Howl/scream the loudest noise I've ever heard in my life. We were so scared at this point and I thought this thing was going to maul us both to death. It was shaking trees in front of it and continued one single howl for what seemed like a minute or so. It had a huge lung capacity to be able to keep it up for so long and at that volume.
We were practically right next to each other and could not move due to how frightened we were. It stopped howling/screaming and continued to growl and then the most terrifying thing happened! I still get chills just thinking about it...It ran so fast and we thought it was charging at us for the attack. From memory, I think we both screamed at this point...I'm positive I did.
It moved left down the tree line and covered 10 to 15 metres in an instant. It stopped, screamed again, although not as long as the initial one and then ran further away. We heard it splash several times into water while running and then we heard nothing.
We both got in one car and got out of there.
I suffered from shock that night and it took quite a few years for things to be as clear as they are today. I feel it was a territorial threat and we were warned to leave. Fear made it appear we were standing our ground and it decided to leave instead.
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