YOWIE researcher Dean Harrison insists he has nearly been killed twice by the mysterious hairy creature.
So when the QT continued our hunt for evidence of the elusive beast in the Ipswich area it was worth having a chat to the man who has had numerous yowie encounters, and interviewed the witness to the sighting of the Mulgowie Yowie back on August 15, 2001.
Harrison, who runs the Australian Yowie Research website, has been searching for yowies for over 20 years.
He has provided a recorded interview with a certain Steve Doyle, who on September 22, 2013 was driving with his wife on the Laidley-Rosewood Rd at dusk when he got one hell of a fright.
“I glanced to the side of the road and it was my height…five foot four. It just looked like a person standing on the side of the road,” Doyle revealed.
“It would have been about 15m away from us at that stage…and as I looked across it was running back into the scrub on all fours (after it was) standing up.
“My wife said ‘that was a bear…that was hairy’ and I said ‘that is just plain weird’.
“At first I thought it was a person in the shadows but then it dropped on all fours and went back out into the paddock.”
Doyle is a hunter and said “it was nothing like I’d seen before”.
“It was black with long hair. It would have been around 80 or 90 kilos…with a normal sized head in comparison to us. It didn’t take off at any great speed. It just loped off.”
Doyle said he was later stunned to learn of a sighting in the region 12 years earlier.
The QT reported on the sighting by a Mrs Crouten near Mulgowie in 2001. Harrison went out on location to interview Mrs Crouten at the time, who was working as a cook for a local doctor and was driving home at night.
Mrs Crouten saw the creature just outside of Mulgowie in her headlights as it was walking on all fours. She was reported as saying that it was covered in hair and “looked like a large version of an Orangutan”.
She was famously quoted as saying that “it had a distinctive monkey’s bottom”.
Shaken, she called the police and was regarded by the senior constable who spoke to her as a credible witness.
“That was a life changing experience for her and she was pretty shaken up about it,” Harrison said.
“Then the police got involved, it all hit the media and she laid low.
“It is a relatively small community and once word got around about the Mulgowie Yowie it was pretty much common knowledge.
Frankie P
Good report. They seem to be believed more that people here when they report them, and that is nice.
Roy B
I am from Australia and have seen his reports and research site, and some of the encounters are “sketchy” even some of his team have denied what really happened in his so called encounters. Since then I have not gone back on his website. His stories seem somewhat fabricated even according to his assistants.
Roy B
If you want to follow some real field researching of Yowies in Australia get on Youtube and look for TheRusty222 website. This guy goes to a lot of trouble by building extravagant camera traps, microphone traps, etc. Really interesting and no BS. He uses drones for aerial footage outlining the extremely thick foliage of the Australian bush landscapes and where he ventures into deploying his camera traps.
Tyler D
I actually have done quite a bit of research on the Australian Yowie. The native Aborigines have some incredible stories on these animals. Just like in the U.S. the yowie is known to kidnap and eat people. And the Natives were absolutely ahead of their time in terms of this subject. They’ve been aware of multiple types of these animals for hundreds of years. The break it basically into two types- one is the smaller more intelligent type, which they said have been known to make stone tools and weapons and they believed some of them were even capable of making fire. The other is the larger, more robust and aggressive type which is more gorilla looking and are more likely to kidnap and eat the native aborigines. Both types are known to kidnap and eat people but the larger type is much more likely too. They said they have even set traps for wondering and unsuspecting natives, and sometimes even used crude tools to cut them into smaller portions and cook them. These natives talk about a great war that took place between the aborigines and the yowie because the yowie were said to be raiding camps and taking too many of their people. They said they’re terrifying and absolutely hideous to look upon. But if you guys take the time to think about it, isn’t a lot of that what we here from a lot of Native American tribes here in the U.S.? I think the fact that many of these native people from different countries with different cultures have so many similar accounts, experiences and stories with these animals and that just helps justify that these things are out there. At least to me it does
Christopher c
Can’t wait to hear more on the Down Under version of what we have here in the states.
James M
THANKS TYLER FOR THE AWESOME INFORMATION. I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR MORE ABORIGINAL STORIES FROM AUSTRALIA!
Tyler D
Hey James, there’s a man named Rex Gilroy and he did an absolutely excellent job in getting quite a bit of the stories from the native aborigines and quite a few of the settlers that went to Australia. Theres a website, http://www.yowieresearchcentre.com, if you’re interested. I might post a few of them because I really enjoy them and I’m sure you guys would as well
Tyler D
If the link doesn’t work, I would look up the website on Google. It’s definitely worth a few minutes
claire r
Theres a book called the yowie , its available as ebook i got mine from kobo its a great read. Its not expensive, has history of the yowie, etc. There is also yowiehunters.com.au , I should write to wes i had a crazy experience with a yowie, and the members of that site were very supportive through a very stressful time. The above posters correct theres 2 types, mine was the large one and hes moved on, i believe there nomadic, and the smaller ones live in groups.
Jan W
Thanks for the information, Tyler. I agree that such detailed, similar stories coming from two continents should not be ignored. Arlene, would really like to hear your Yowie experience. Everything I have read about Yowies leads me to believe they are aggressive and very dangerous.