Location: Noojee, Victoria
Event: Yowie Encounter
Date: 1984
Time: 2am
Myself, my best friend Richie, my girlfriend Sally and Richie’s girlfriend Alita decided to go on a camping trip and didn’t quite know where to go as we hadn’t really done much camping before.
Alita suggested we go to Noojee as she spent time there with her family as a little girl and it was wild isolated bush... just what we wanted. Noojee it was.....Thought we would drive up there and head deep into the bush to really rough it.
We parked the car down a remote bush track, grabbed all our gear and proceeded on into the dense bushland.... machetes and all. We were so committed to roughing it, we were going deep, clearing our way through the bush until we came across a river bend...... perfect... couldn’t get deeper into the bush if you tried.
We cleared an area for our campsite and set up camp, cracked a few beers, got a fire happening and had something to eat. We took pot shots at the empty cans with Richies slug gun, dropped a few lines in the river.... sun was shining.... great day... couldn’t have asked for better.
Night fell. We sat around campfire talking and having a laugh for a while until we decided to hit the hay...
all in the one tent... a bit of talk before we all settled and all was silent.
I couldn’t get to sleep for some reason... don’t know why. I assumed the others had drifted off by now, and while lying there, I hear from across the other side of the river something crashing through the dense bush.
Small trees were cracking, snapping and smashing and getting closer and closer to the opposite side of the river.
I froze where I lay, petrified, I couldn’t believe what was unfolding before me. It was surreal to say the least.
Whatever it was marched through that dense bushland like a knife through butter... no effort whatsoever..... and it had stopped on the side of the creek just opposite our tent on the other side.
Then to my further amazement and shock, I heard it jump off the embankment and plunge into the river... are you serious? Earlier in the day we swam in that river. I was about 5’4” and the water level was up to my chest. I could hear this things legs wading through the water. It was coming straight across the river towards our tent. I heard it reach our side of the river and step out of the water and walk around our tent at least three times.
I heard it walking around our smouldering campfire checking things out. It circled the tent once more and then took off, marching through the bush just like it did before with trees snapping and smashing off into the distance
until out of earshot.
Still frozen and unable to move with no one else stirring, I didn’t sleep for most of the night.
Everyone was very quiet the next day and when I brought up what I had experienced through the night everyone jumped in with their account. They were awake and playing possum too. Like me to petrified to move or speak...
We looked around and saw all the damage to the surrounding trees. It looked like a bobcat had cut a path through the bush.... We found footprints in the soft mud near the bank of the river and around the campsite. The footprints continued over a giant fallen gum that we couldn’t even climb over.
I wanted to drive to a general store or something and get some plaster to take samples of the prints which by the way were classic big foot type prints, huge... big toe... three or four smaller toes. The girls were too scared to stay any longer especially Alita who confessed to us that there were stories circulating in the area when she stayed in the area as a little girl so we packed up and high tailed it out of there.
Marty.
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