Location: Wombeyan Caves, New South Wales
Event: Possible Yowie Encounter
Date: 1987
Time: Night
Hi Dean,
Here is my story:
This occurred in Australia some 34 years ago and continues to haunt me to this day.
I was 27 years old and had recently arrived in Australia from the UK for a yearlong working holiday. I had remade contact with an old childhood friend from the UK and her boyfriend. We had been undertaking a short several day touring and camping trip around New South Wales and one of the places we stopped at was Wombeyan caves state park. As you know this is an area of quite spectacular cave formations and national park with dense bush and mountains.
Anyway we had spent the day exploring the caves and had got back to the campground to cook supper. By the time we had cooked and eaten it was quite dark but the sky was clear and with the absence of any street lighting the stars were shining brightly. We decided to go for an evening stroll through the bush on a dirt track. As we walked down the track we heard a real commotion up above us to the left, maybe 30 yards away. It seemed like there were several dogs in some kind of compound that were going absolutely crazy, I've never heard dogs in that state before. There was however another element to this and that was the presence of a large animal with very heavy footsteps that sounded like it was running up and down next to the compound almost like it was deliberately trying to rile them. The interesting thing about this is that the footsteps were in a sort of 1,2 pattern rather than a regular trot. It was like 1,2 stop, 1,2 stop.
As we got closer it became apparent that this thing was heavy, heavier than any natural animal in Australia and certainly heavier than a full grown man and was quite obviously bipedal. It was difficult to believe that a large kangaroo would be running around in dense bush in pitch black conditions. At this point my friend Julie became spooked and decided to wait where she was whilst we agreed to carry on and check it out. We both had flashlights with us so we decided to walk off the track into the bush although we were pretty spooked! The track at this point curved round to the left and was cut into the bank above us such that we were forced to walk a ways around this bend to a point where the bank levelled off and we could climb up to walk in. We lost sight of Julie at this point. All the while the noise continued and we started walking in slowly.
I have to admit that as we got closer we were starting to get really spooked. This thing was really heavy and from say 20 yards away we could feel the ground shaking with its footfall. at one point we looked at each other and decided that it was just too much and I remember distinctly thinking that whatever it was might attack if we showed up and shone our flashlights on it, Ive not experienced that level of fear before and it was difficult to rationalise. We decided to head back to the track. At this point we heard the thing change direction and come running not directly at us but more at a 45 degree angle back to the track. It came crashing through the branches at full tilt and remember it was pitch dark there, no moon or lights of any kind. The next thing we heard was a loud thud as it reached the 5 foot bank and jumped onto the track. We heard no more noise from it. This was odd as it had three possible exits. One was back along the track we had just used but Julie was stood there and later said she saw nothing. The other way was further along this track but we had sight of this and it definitely didn't go that way. The third way was through the bush opposite to the direction it had come. At this point the bush changed and became very dense paperbark almost swamp. There is no way anything could run through that without making a noise. It just seemed to vanish.
We reached the track again and started walking back to where Julie waited. As we crossed the point where the creature hit the track as it jumped off the bank there was the most terrible smell like rotting flesh mixed with a really dirty animal smell. Very strong and not pleasant. Unfortunately Julie saw nothing as she was round the bend in the track and we never saw it either.
To this day I am unsure if we made the right choice by not proceeding further, were we in danger? if we had seen it would we wish we hadn't? who knows but it's something I'll never forget.
Best regards
Jeremy in the UK
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