Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

Greetings, Wes, from Down Under! In 1976, at age 18 years, I was working part-time in a sports store/gun shop in Sydney, Australia. One day, the then 35 year old store manager, whom I knew very well, confided that he had seen a very strange creature during one of his many hunting trips to the remote central north of the state of New South Wales. (This is over nine hours’ drive from Sydney & near the town of Brewarinna. He used to hunt out there nearly every weekend).

He gave me the same account on two separate occasions. The sighting occurred during a late night hunting session on a grazing property that he regularly visited. Aided by a powerful spotlight mounted on his vehicle, and a German-made, Kahles scope bedded on a .308 calibre bolt action rifle, he had been shooting wild boar at long range.

Through his light-gathering telescopic sight, and at about 150 yards distance, he spotted this disturbingly tall, human-like,hairy creature. It was lanky and around 7-8′ in height. Standing firmly on two legs, the creature was looking towards my friend. Most of the thing’s face was obscured by shaggy hair.

After a few seconds, it just turned around and calmly walked away.

At the time, I had never heard of Big-Foot, Yowie or anything else like that. I therefore found it hard to process what my highly-experienced hunter friend was describing. But he was deadly serious and quite clear on what he had seen, although he had no idea what it was.

I remember the above account clearly because my hunter friend related it with striking conviction.

Fast forward another forty years to 21 February 2016.

In surprisingly wild bushland fringing the northern suburbs of Sydney, Australia, my daughter, her close friend and I all witnessed a strange thing cross the highway right in front of our car. (Both girls were 20 years old at the time. They are sensible, balanced and switched-on).

Our random sighting occurred on the Wakehurst Parkway, a thoroughfare skirting the southern and eastern sections of the 22 square kilometre Garigal National Park. Largely surrounded by thick bushland, this is a surprisingly lonely road in the bewitching hours.

At around 5:30 am, in the half-light and with a light fog, this thing emerged from the edge of the road out of thick bushland. It was right alongside a large culvert which channels a narrow creek under the parkway. This bush-obscured creek continues for kilometres through a near total wilderness that eventually joins up with another very expansive national park.

The large, extremely thick-set being appeared before us hunched forward and seemingly gliding across the road. The two of us in the front seats saw it first, followed by my daughter in the back seat, after she heard our exclamations. Seeing it suddenly and unexpectedly, I had to hit the brakes pretty hard.

The whole encounter probably lasted only 3-5 seconds. By the time we had fully halted, the thing was barely 4-5 metres away from our car’s front bonnet. It appeared fully focused on just steadily crossing the narrow highway (i.e. a single lane for each direction).

To me, it seemed un-rushed and oblivious to our car, and also to several cars coming in the opposite direction. I do not recall it glancing side-ways, although my daughter, in the back seat and with a wider view, said the thing did look at the car (Perhaps I missed this because I was focused on avoiding a collision).

A car coming in the opposite direction slowed noticeably as the creature crossed in front of it and into the beams of its headlights. Then, even before it had completely moved past that car, the thing just totally disappeared. It seemed to dissolve into thin air.

Description

The being was nothing like any of us had ever seen before.

In the brief but close side view of the thing, I was struck by how large it was in mass and width of chest and how smoothly and deliberately it moved across the road. My first, tentative impression was that this was an extremely heavy-set man in a great coat. Since it was hunched forward and moving away from me, I could not see any head at all.

Its height with its shoulders hunched forward seemed to be at least 6 feet. Yet the sheer mass of the thing had more impact on me than its height.

I did not notice actual hair because it was still half dark and there was little time to observe the creature. I also don’t recall seeing any arms or legs moving.

My Initial Reaction

I have spent many years encountering animals in the wilds of Australia and neighbouring tropical countries like Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Fiji. But I was confused & bewildered by this apparition-like thing and, for years, could not explain it.

My daughter’s friend, “B” had concluded it was a ghost because of its gliding trajectory, its sudden disappearance and due to a well-documented pattern of “ghost” sightings allegedly occurring along this particular road.

Since I never had seen a ghost anywhere before, and because this thing was much bigger than the alleged ghosts described in the documented sightings for this road, I had to reserve judgement. It was not until more than a decade later, when I started listening to “Sasquatch Chronicles”, that it became apparent that we actually had seen a Yowie.

In our car, I did not feel scared or threatened by what we saw. But, nearly every day after this, I was strongly incredulous and quite confused by the experience.

An account by "A", my daughter

We were driving our car down Wakehurst Parkway around 5:30am on the way to a beach. It was still pretty dark and slightly foggy/misty on the road.

Suddenly, we came across something in the middle of the road. Dad called out and swerved a little.

It looked like a very large man (I couldn’t see its face), seemingly in a black trench coat with a bucket hat. It was shaped like Hagrid from Harry Potter.

It was bigger than a usual adult male and tall and wide, stocky. It had long shaggy, dark/black hair – like wet curly hair.

For a moment, it just stood there unconcerned and stared but then it just suddenly disappeared.

Initially, I felt fearful as I thought it was a scary man in the middle of the road who was going to stop our car or something. Later, I thought it was a large human, or even probably a ghost.

The thing was shaped like Hagrid:

The bucket hat head shape was like this:

An account from "B", my daughter's friend:

It was early morning, around 5:30 ish and “Greg” and his daughter, “A,” came to pick me up from my house to go down to the coast and watch the sunrise at Newport Beach.

It was a warm morning and a little foggy/ hazy as we travelled down Wakehurst Parkway. “Greg” was driving, “A” was in the backseat and I was in the front passenger seat.

We approached the intersection near Oxford Falls Church and school which is a four way cross intersection and, in what seemed somewhat similar to a fever dream, I noticed someone just past the intersection start to cross the road.

Vision was a bit tricky as there wasn’t much light but whoever it was was extremely tall, long limbed and looked to be possibly cloaked in something black that distorted their facial features and maybe even a little hunched. They seemed to glide rather than walk across the road.

What was odd to me was that they were about 10 metres from the designated crossing in a really unusual place to cross and as they got to the middle they just seemed to disappear.

I thought it was my imagination but was horrified to realise that “Greg” and “A” both seemed to react the way I did and all of us saw it. There was also another car coming the other way that seemed to slow down in reaction to it as well but the whole situation and the person in question just didn’t seem to make any sense.

I wasn’t scared necessarily but a bit shocked that it wasn’t in my head and my brain was struggling to comprehend what we had just witnessed and still struggle to this day.