Location: Dorrigo, New South Wales
Event: Possible Yowie Encounter
Environment: Rainforest, escarpment, popular walking track
Date: Autumn 2015
Time: Late Afternoon
A friend and I were bushwalking, we started late, around 2:30pm. It was mid-autumn, and the sun would set around 5pm, but we were on the eastern side of the plateau, so it would get dark earlier. We headed out along a popular walking track taking our time and enjoying the journey rather than focusing on the destination, stopping to look at fungi, plants etc. Other hikers were started to trickle past on their way back to the carpark.
At around 4pm we saw a very large boulder on the right side of the track which was up the slope, with an escarpment above. We decided to sit on the boulder and enjoy the environment of the forest. On the left side of the track the landscape fell away fairly steeply in fairly dense scrub, consisting of large trees, ferns, palms etc. As we left the track and headed toward the boulder (about 20 metres from the track), I heard a thud from behind me, which gave me pause, but shook it off fairly quickly. We sat on the boulder, overlooking the walking track and the forest below. Within minutes we heard a tree knock from the below the track, followed shortly after by the sound of something large moving parallel to and just below the track.
We quietly discussed what we thought it might be and observed. A few minutes later a rock was thrown from over our right shoulder approx. 50 metres away. The rock was thrown down the hill toward the track, not at us. This was followed by another rock over our left shoulder, again toward the track. More movement below the track… It was quiet for several minutes, then we heard hikers coming back along the trail, they didn’t even see us sitting there, lol.
We sat and talked a while, then the sound of movement below the track again, it felt a bit more purposeful this time, we got the impression it wanted us to leave. More rock throwing from the right, followed by the left. This went on for some time, until eventually rock thrower to the right was more active than the others. We got was it was a distraction, as the one on the left stopped, followed by the stomper below. After about 45 minutes we decided to leave as it was getting dark in the forest, and we felt uneasy not knowing where they were now.
We headed back along the trail (to our left as we were sitting), we discovered several rocks that had certainly not been there before, laying on the path, obviously from the rock thrower on our left. They ranged from mandarin to apple sized. About 150 metres along we discovered a giant stinging tree had been broken and laid across the path that was not there less than an hour before. It was approx. 3” in diameter, and 15ft high. Anyone who knows the forest knows to stay away from those, and the hikers that passed earlier were unlikely culprits to vandalise the forest and risk the pain. We surmised that the rock thrower and the more aggressive one below back tracked whilst the rock thrower on our right kept our attention. I can tell you now that if they don’t want you to hear them move, you wont. We had our ears pricked and didn’t hear them move, unless the one below wanted us to. Of course there were the usual forest sounds to disguise movement, but they were still stealthy.
We left the forest with no further incident. Our vehicle was the last one in the carpark, and being in a remote location, highly doubtful we were being pranked.
What we surmised after the experience: these creatures were used to humans in their territory which is now a somewhat limited area due to the expansion of farmland etc. It also happens to be a very popular location due its beauty and ancient forest. I think they manage to avoid detection because most people are too focused on their destination. Hikers walked right by us, sitting on a huge boulder 20 metres away! They didn’t glance up from the trail. We were there to enjoy the experience. We stopped. Obviously interrupting the family setting out for an evening of foraging and hunting. We felt the one below was more aggressive in its demeanor, probably the alpha male. Maybe the thud I heard was a stomp, like some animals do, to warn us not to stop. I have a theory that the wood knocks are warning signals to each other, like “human! Beware!”. We thought the one on the right was possibly the matriarch, with a juvenile to our left. We came to this conclusion because of the way the rocks were thrown, being more confidently and tentative respectively.
We didn’t feel in danger, but definitely got the message that we were not supposed to be there and they weren’t happy with us.
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