Yowie

The yowie is a legendary hairy, ape-like creature said to live in the bush and mountains of eastern Australia. Its stories began in Aboriginal oral history. Nobody has captured one or shown a body.

It is usually described as walking upright, between 2.1 and 3.6 metres tall, with a wide, flat nose. People keep reporting sightings in places like the Blue Mountains, but the reports are unproven. Like Bigfoot in North America, the yowie is a famous example of a cryptid, an animal people talk about but science has not confirmed. Stories like this show how folklore and imagination can shape the way people see the wild.

The legend

Different Aboriginal peoples have different names for similar creatures, such as Quinkin in Queensland and Doolaga in New South Wales. The word yowie was written down in 1875 by the Reverend William Ridley, who said the Gamilaraay people spoke of Yō-wī as a spirit that roams the earth at night. Some scholars think European tales of hairy wild men and the character Yahoo from Gulliver's Travels added to the modern story.

Sightings and facts

In 1882 a naturalist, Henry James McCooey, claimed to see a tailless, hairy ape on the New South Wales south coast. In 2000 a bushwalker filmed an unknown two-legged figure in the Brindabella Mountains, called the Piper Film. In the mid-1970s the Queanbeyan Festival Board and radio station 2CA offered a reward of 200,000 Australian dollars for a captured yowie. It has never been claimed.

On the globe

The model shows the yowie as the legend describes it, standing in the bush.