Location: Megalong Valley, New South Wales
Event: Yowie Sighting
Date: Sept 23rd, 2006
Time: 1.30pm
[Female Witnesses aged 20yrs]
Two witness accounts below. Incident reported to the AYR 3 days prior to the interview. Both interviewed by Paul Cropper on Video. Transcribed by Tony Healy.
Catherine:
“I’m a pretty experienced rider. There was me, my husband Brendan, Sarah, another girl we didn’t know, and the trail guide (from Werriberri Trail Rides). We started about 1:15 PM.
“We were about 5 to 10 minutes into the ride; the others were 20 to 30 metres ahead when my horse stopped and refused to move. He was sniffing the air and turning around trying to bite me [so] I knew something was wrong. Then I smelt, like, salty blood – a real foul stench – and I looked around to my left and it was right there!
“It looked sort of like a monkey, but more human – a lot smaller than a person – about four foot. It was solid – square shoulders … pretty much like a square block. Very hairy: dark brown, all tangled, like a shaggy dog that hadn’t been washed for a while, and mud all over it … long hair everywhere. I had no idea what I was looking at – I pretty much crapped my pants!
“It had a pushed-in nose. I distinctly remember two canine teeth out the front, outside the lip. I couldn’t see ears because the long hair covered them. I saw eyes, but not distinctly.
“I saw arms, and I only seen three fingers, but there could have been more, because it had something in its hand – something like a dead kangaroo, but smaller. There was [raw] flesh, like whatever it was holding was skinned – like it was inside out.
“The bush was quite open [at that point]. He was 10, 15 metres away, if that. I was looking down at it and could see right down to its feet – I could see everything. The legs were long, but he only had three claws on his feet. It just stood there and looked at me, that’s why I didn’t want to move. It seemed like for ever that I was watching him, but it was only two or three minutes, if that.
“I kept kicking the horse and held on tight, and it took the track pretty quick.”
As her horse began to overtake the others, Catherine could still smell the strange creature, and, although she could no longer see it, “I felt like it was watching me. I held on for dear life and caught up with the others, then all of a sudden we heard the sound of a branch breaking behind us.”
As her horse attempted to pass the others, Catherine fell off, still holding the reins, and pulled the horse down. The trail guide asked her if she’d like to go back to the stables, “But I said no – I didn’t want to wreck their day. Then, about another half hour further along … I was freaked the whole time – I kept smelling the foul smell. Brendan also smelt it then.”
As they proceeded, her friend Sarah was just ahead of Catherine, and Brendan ahead of Sarah. “Then it [the creature] moved past us and Sarah said ‘What the f*** was that?’ And I caught a glimpse of the back of it [as it ran beside the trial] and my horse took off, flew past the other two horses and I hit a tree with my shoulder, came off and hit the ground really bad.
This time Catherine was seriously injured: she had abrasions on her right forearm and hip, fractured right collarbone, two fractured ribs, bruised legs and swollen ankles. “I was in pain, bad. My horse ran off and I was taken back to the stables on Brendan’s horse and he drove me to Katoomba Hospital.”
Catherine’s friend Sarah fully corroborated her story.
Sarah:
“Before I saw it, I smelt something like dried blood … sweat, sort of … then something moved … I heard a little scuffling in the bush and then I saw it [to her right]. It looked like a monkey … an ape sort of thing … hairy.
“There were trees and rocks and little bushes here and there [so she saw only the head, shoulders and upper chest]. It just popped out, and just stared at me and then it just ran. And I went, ‘Whoa!’ And Cate said, ‘Did you see that?’ And I said, ‘Yeah - what the f*** is it?’”
“It wasn’t big or small [about four feet tall]. A browny, blackey colour … all long, scruffy hair. Half human, I reckon, by the looks of it – all hairy, but human -looking. I focused on the eyes and the mouth. Mouth sort of half open. You couldn’t miss the teeth – they were about an inch long, over the lip.
“It’s like it was trying to target us. I was kicking my horse – I just wanted to get out of there! It’s like, ‘Is this thing is gonna eat me? I better get out of here! My adrenaline went … I could have run faster than the horse!”
On her release from hospital Catherine phoned Werriberri camp to ask after her horse: “It had come back all shaken up and had to be rested. The owner said this had only happened once before – about seven or eight years ago [c. 1998/99] when a group of very experienced riders had come back, all as white as ghosts. They’d seen the same thing and smelt the same thing.”
The incident was reported to AYR on 20 Sept 2006, just 24 hours after it occurred.
Paul Cropper interviewed Catherine and Sarah three days later.
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